Upcoming Workshops

If you're in Central New Jersey in late February with absolutely nothing to do, you might consider joining me for my How to Teach a Novel Workshop.

This free workshop, sponsored by New Jersey ASCD, will be held from 4:00 to 5:30 at Bedminster School in Bedminster, NJ. More details are available via this brochure.

In addition to being free, the event will include refreshments and door prizes, plus credit hours to those who need them. Come join us for a great time! Can't make it? Be sure to check out my How to Teach a Novel blog.

Note: Donut pictured here is for illustrative purposes only. Your refreshment experience may vary.

ALL WORKSHOPS:

Most recently I presented at Techspo in Atlantic City, NJ. Techspo is an annual conference sponsored by the New Jersey Association of School Administrators. If you’re interested in integrating technology into your teaching as well as keeping up with the latest information and tools, this is a good conference to catch next year.

My remaining public events for this year include:

How to Teach a Novel Workshop
Sponsored by the New Jersey ASCD (Free of Charge!)
February 24, 2010
4:00 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.
Bedminster Township School
Bedminster, New Jersey
More details available in this brochure.
(I’ll be presenting on How to Teach a Novel for teachers in grades 3-8).

Teacher Talk Radio
Facilitated by Jen Schneider, host of Teacher Talk Radio
March 3, 2010 (UPDATE: Rescheduled to April; details to follow).
8:00 - 8:30 p.m.
www.blogtalkradio.com/teachertalkradio
(You can also listen to the talk in the archives if you miss it live).

Integrating Technology Into Content Area Instruction
Sponsored by New Jersey ASCD
Secondary Level: March 9, 2010
Elementary Level: March 16, 2010
(I’ll be at the Elementary Level Day only).
9:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
FEA Conference Center
Monroe Township, New Jersey
http://tinyurl.com/ITCAI
(I’ll be presenting on Interactive Reading and Writing Sites).

10th Annual from My Classroom to Yours Conference
Sponsored by Southern Regional Institute & ETTC
March 17, 2010
8:30 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.
The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey
Pomona, New Jersey
http://www.ettc.net/conference
(Still awaiting confirmation for this conference).

2010 NJMSA Statewide Annual Conference
Sponsored by the New Jersey Middle School Association
March 19, 2010
(see site for times)
Kean University
Union, NJ
http://www.njmsa.com/
(I’ll be presenting on How to Teach a Novel).

NELMS Annual Conference
Sponsored by the New England League of Middle Schools
April 8-10, 2010
(see site for times)
Providence, Rhode Island
http://www.nelms.org/calendar/annual/annual.html
(Still awaiting confirmation for this conference).

2010 Spring Conference: 21st Century Learning for ELLs
Sponsored by NJTESOL/NJBE
May 18, 19 2010
(see site for times)
DoubleTree and Garden State Exhibit Center
Somerset, New Jersey
http://www.njtesol-njbe.org/spring-conference/
(I’ll be presenting on Interactive Reading and Writing Tools).

How NOT to Teach a Novel

Some teachers, with all the best intentions, treat novels like pinatas, beating them with sticks until every last piece of sweet candy falls out. Those of you who caught my How to Teach a Novel session at the New England League of Middle Schools (NELMS) Conference know I use that metaphor frequently. For good reason, trust me.

As Kelly Gallagher points out in his recent book Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Readig and What You Can Do About It, teachers underteach books; that is, they assign chapters in extremely difficult books for independent reading, and students either choose not to read the selection, or they read it with little understanding. On the other end of the spectrum, however, are those teachers who overteach novels; they are not satisfied until the pages have been wrung out like dish rags, emptied of every teachable vocabulary word, allusion, metaphor, and simile.

In my How to Teach a Novel sessions I certainly point out that every novel should be read and reread with pencil in hand, in order to decide, "What's worth our attention?" or, more practically, "What's worth teaching?" (see How to Teach a Novel for a synopsis of this topic). That doesn't mean, however, that the teacher needs to teach it all!

Imagine that you're listening to the Motown classic My Girl on the radio. How frustrating would it be if every twenty seconds the DJ interrupted the song to examine its language, or to "enlighten you" with some historical background which places the song or group into a historical context?

I've got sunshine, on a cloudy day

(Does the singer literally have sunshine? Is this an oxymoron alone, or is it meant to, in some way, be metaphorical?)

When it's cold outside, I've got the month of May

(Who knows the origin of the name Motown? Right, it's related to the fact that Gordon Berry established his record label in Detroit, which is also known as the Motor City. But who can tell me the nickname Berry gave to Motown Records itself? Why don't we continue to pause the song while our listeners look that up?)

I guess you'd say, "What can make me feel this way?"

(Note the use of sentence variety here, and the way in which the singer directly addresses his audience. Is he expecting an answer? What do we call a question in which the speaker does not expect to receive an answer?)

I think you get the idea. When it comes to teaching novels, I wish everyone did.

Ralph Fletcher: A Way with Words

A few nights ago I had the genuine pleasure of hearing Ralph Fletcher speak on Helping Young Writers Develop Writers’ Craft at an event sponsored by the Tri-County Reading Council here in New Jersey. For those who may not know him, Ralph Fletcher is a writer of picture books, novels, and poetry. He is also a teacher of teachers, having created such excellent writing instruction books as Craft Lessons: Teaching Writing K-8 and Writing Workshop: The Essential Guide.

What I personally took away from his talk is that we, as teachers, make writing far too complicated. We fail to keep it simple, and as a reult students see it as a complicated task they they are ill-equipped to tackle. We perhaps attempt to accomplish too much in any given writing lesson, which makes the average student reluctant to write (How can I possibly get all that stuff right?) and the average teacher reluctant to teach (How can I possibly choose from among all those skills that students must demonstrate?).

Throughout his presentation, Ralph shared many examples of student writing which were equal parts skillful, humorous, and charming. Some pieces made us laugh out loud; another piece, when shared, caused a colleague at my table to remark, “If one of my students wrote that, I would not be able to hold back the tears.” These authentic, concrete examples reminded us, in Ralph’s own words, that “story comes first,” and that we, as readers, need time to respond in a natural way to students’ writing.

Interspersed between picture book readings and student examples were the “nuggets of wisdom” we had all come to hear. How shocked we were to learn that we already knew them! As writers, as teachers, we already knew what he had to share. But in our attempts to follow the curriculum, meet the standards, and pound every nail, we had forgotten the simpler things.

Ralph had three straightforward (read: simple), yet powerful, ideas to share on the topic of Craft Elements.

His first: Take advantage of micro-texts.

The readers of this blog know how I feel about picture books and the unique role they play in modeling colorful, yet concise, writing. As I posted at the sister site (which provides support for picture books in the middle grades):

When we ask our students to "write a story," we rarely mean a story with chapters. Why, then, should we have students read only those types of books? Picture books provide succinct models for student writing. Nonfiction picture books also exemplify brevity versus exposition in presenting the facts that the reader needs.

Ralph illustrated that very idea by pointing out that in first grade, children write what they are reading: few words with many pictures. This changes as they move up in grades, however, until by fourth grade students are reading novels that they couldn't ever hope to write, given their existing skills. In other words, (mine, not his), children who have little or no access to micro-texts are being denied accurate, realistic models for their own writing.

As an example, Ralph shared his wonderful picture book Grandpa Never Lies. He then recounted a classroom lesson he had observed about that very book, and how the teacher had used the analogy of a snowball rolling downhill, growing ever larger as it progressed. The recurring line of the book acted in much the same way, growing with importance each time it was repeated.

Such a concept is easy to study in the context of a picture book; so much harder to extrapolate from the noise and confusion of a novel.

Ralph’s second observation: Use literature that kids already know. (By the way, I dig Ralph because he uses the word kids. Too many teacher bristle at that!).

Is it okay to reread books? Absolutely! According to Ralph, “Really deep connections come from rereading books.”

And if students say, “But we read that book last year,” your response can be, “Great! Then this time we can read it the way that writers read.” That, in turn, leads to new, fertile ground for understanding: How do writers read differently from readers?

And lastly: Note what your student writers are already doing.

Yes, we can spend time marveling over what professional authors have produced, but are we taking time to recognize our own students as writers? Are we acknowledging their efforts? Do they feel that, as humble students, they have the credentials to call themselves writers? Are we, in Ralph Fletcher’s words, “putting kids into the game” and allowing them to be in the “circle of authorship?”

Celebrate the successes you see, no matter how small. Use students’ work to model strengths, but never to illustrate deficits.

It is so tempting, he says, to try to teach everything (voice, leads, character development, etc.). This leads to teachers “mentioning” elements of writing rather than actually teaching them. One of the most important skills that we miss, due to our efforts to “teach it all,” is that of having children critically reread their own writing. How can they improve their writing if they never take time to reflect upon it? It is so much more beneficial to take your time, focus on just a few aspects of writing, and teach those well.

In closing, Ralph reminded his audience that when looking at student writing, it’s important to “respond as a human being first and a teacher second.”

I’m glad he said that. Sometimes I forget. Even though I already knew it.

So check out Ralph’s work, both for your students and for yourself. Craft Lessons is my favorite (I bought my third copy tonight, since colleagues have “borrowed” my previous two), A Writing Kind Of Day: Poems for Young Poetsis hugely popular in my class during Poetry Month in April, Marshfield Dreams: When I Was a Kid is an autobiography with authentic voice, and Grandpa Never Lies is on my “Gotta Have” list after hearing it tonight. (These and several others are featured in the slide show in the right margin of this page).

Also check out Ralph Fletcher’s homepage, which features tips for teachers and young writers, plus additional information about the author and his work.

Making the Abstract Concrete with Word Clouds

Wordle is an online app for generating “word clouds” from any text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text (in other words, they make 'em bigger). The resulting images can be tweaked with varying colors, fonts, and layouts, and then used as you like.




I recently used Wordle to create a title slide for a session on summer camp staff training for the Salvation Army. I reconfigured that slide three times to illustrate some of the options the site permits.

After a couple false starts, I recommend you cluster your words in a Word document first so that you can easily spell check and save them. If you attempt to use the back button to add to or edit your word cluster, you’ll sadly discover that the site did not save them. Some additional notes:

• The more times you repeat a word, the larger it will appear. So if the topic is Love, and you want that word to appear 5 times larger than the rest, then you will need to type it at least five times.



• Words you would like to stay linked must be connected with a tilde (that shift character that appears to the far left on the number row and looks like this ~). So “role model” would need to be “role~model.” The tilde will disappear in the final project.



• Once your project appears, using the Randomize button lets you see many possibilities you may not have considered.



• If you want a certain word (say your largest) to use a specific color from the palette that you’re using, go to the Color tab and choose Recolor. That will switch which words use each color, without changing the palette, font, shape, etc.



• To save, you must print as a PDF, or easier, click on Ctrl and PrtScrn. This saves the whole screen as a screen shot which can be pasted and cropped to be used elsewhere. (Click Ctrl, then Prt Scrn. Nothing will appear to have happened, but when you right click in a Word doc or Power Point slide, you'll be able to paste the entire screen shot there. Then use the Crop feature from your Picture tools to trim to size).

You do NOT have to send it to the gallery to get the screen shot. Realize that anything sent to the gallery is for public viewing forever. That's especially important to remember if you're using this application with students and prefer their work to remain private.

Possible uses?

• creating title slides and program covers
• brainstorming ideas
• designing "me" poems (based upon interests)
• summarizing thoughts from a collaborative session
• turning random ideas into art
• crafting "found poetry" using original words or text selections (for example, several paragraphs from a novel can be entered, insignificant words can be marked for deletion, and the remaining key words will be formed into a word cloud)

I recently used the app to create custom Valentines for my students. The site offers a gallery of completed projects which might to spark your imagination.