Multigenre articles

Wow!!!  I am so excited about completing this project after reading about all that it entails.  I think that it is going to be so fun to do research on someone that you don’t know much about, and to be able to create some of the artifacts through genres will be fun and challenging at the same time.

The Moulton article was quiet interesting.  When she started the article I thought that it was real neat how the teachers she talked about had tried some new approaches to teaching research skills.  I really liked the I search paper.  My favorite though was the multigenre project by Ramonos.  I feel that through doing one of these projects the students will really benefit so much more than by doing just a boring research paper.  I do feel however that the students that the writer was teaching really had a hard time understanding what they should be doing because Moulton went into the project without having any kind of example or a ready grading rubric.  The students didn’t know what to expect and how their final project should look.  Being that these students were going to be teachers I feel like they were probably like our class is about knowing every little thing that has to be done, how it should look, and when it is to be turned in.  That is just how teachers and pre service teachers are.

After reading Writing without Boundaries I was really excited to see all the different genres that we will be able to incorporate into our multigenre project.  I am probably going to do Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis or Princess Grace Kelly.  I haven’t really decided which one yet because I want to know more about both of them.

I think that the book is right there needs to be modeling of genres for the students in the genres that you expect them to use in their project.  I was amazed by the examples of elementary school mutligenre projects that I saw in the book.  They were so well put together.  The definitions that the students gave at the beginning of chapter 1 were so well presented.  When I first read them before I moved onto the rest of the reading I thought they were written by much older students. I was amazed when I found out they were elementary schools students.  The fact that the students could sum the project up that well really showed me that you can teach the students about the different genres and how to put a presentation together and make it work.  I know that it would be near impossible to do a project this size in kindergarten, but I know that you could still teach the students about the different genres by showing them examples such as the Jolly Postman (I love this book and always have, I have had it since I was in elementary school and have used it in my classrooms to talk about letters), and creating them together as a class.  I really think that this chapter gave great detail on how to implement a project like this into the classroom.

Acrostic Poem

Beautiful butterflies forming

Under a delicate chrysalis

Taking exactly the right amount of

Time to come out and ready themselves with great

Effort to flap their wet wings and prepare to fly.  

Ready set go, they are on their way to

Find golden beads of nectar to feed on in a fanciful garden.

Life will be short but meaningful.  The bright

Youthful colors make this graceful insect fascinating to watch.

What is an I Poem?

After reading the books that are in the I poem form I decided an I poem is a poem that comes from a first person point of view.  The person that is writing the poem steps into the role and writes about their view.  An I poem is very descriptive.  It also contains a lot of emotions.  An I poem gives a lot of information to help the reader understand the past or the future or to help the reader grasp what something looks like.  I poems really help the reader to understand how the object, person, or place are feeling and what they are thinking.

I think that I poems would be a very good type of poetry to teach students about first person perspective.  I think that by reading I poems in the classroom helps the students to understand how these objects are feeling.  It gives students the chance to see writing through someone else’s eyes.

I also enjoyed reading Dr. Frye’s article.  I think it gives a very detailed scaffold for how to teach your students to write an I poem.  I know that poetry is hard to teach and as a teacher you do not just want to throw the students in and not explain anything.  All that would happen from this would be frustration.  I feel that by providing students with the background information they need, and by supplying many examples of the poetry you want them to write, the students will really be able to succeed at putting together their ideas.  Once they have their ideas they can use the scaffolding that has been provided and they can dive right on in, hopefully feeling comfortable about what they are creating.

I Am Poem

Here is my revised I Poem.

i-am-a-butterfly.doc

Haiku Poem

I am not sure if I am on the right track with the Haiku poem but please let me know any feedback you may have. 

The Summer Air

Air blowing gently

throughout the dark summer skies.

Calmness fills the air.

Concrete Poem

Concrete Poem

Here is my completed concrete poem.  Let me know your ideas of what you think.  I added some color to make it more appealing.

My Favorite Poem

One Inch Tall

 If you were only one inch tall, you’d ride a worm to school.
The teardrop of a crying ant would be your swimming pool.
A crumb of cake would be a feast
And last you seven days at least,
A flea would be a frightening beast
If you were one inch tall.

 If you were only one inch tall, you’d walk beneath the door,
And it would take about a month to get down to the store.
A bit of fluff would be your bed,
You’d swing upon a spider’s thread,
And wear a thimble on your head
If you were one inch tall.

You’d surf across the kitchen sink upon a stick of gum.
You couldn’t hug your mama, you’d just have to hug her thumb.
You’d run from people’s feet in fright,
To move a pen would take all night,
(This poem took fourteen years to write–
‘Cause I’m just one inch tall).

Shel Silverstein

I Poems by Kucan

I really enjoyed reading about I poems.  I had never really learned to much about I poems.  I think that I poems would be a great way to introduce a first person perspective to your students.  If a teacher uses I poems in their class I feel that students would really be engaged.  I know that first, like the article said, you would have to give examples, but once they saw how much fun it could be I think they would really get into it.  I really like how I poems evoke emotion and are so descriptive.  When I read the examples it made me feel like I was there with the person who was writing it.  It makes you really think about how the other person might have been feeling when they wrote the poem.

I think that this article gave excellent ways to present how to start writing I poems.  It even gave the ”I am” model that students could plug their ideas into.  I think having models like the “I am” format is good for those students that really need solid examples and that really struggle with coming up with ideas without any help.  I know that when I was in school I always became worried when it was time to write because teachers just kind of threw us into it and I felt like I was left there to fend for myself with no examples or strategies of good ways to write.  I think that by giving examples, making our own examples together as a class, and then even having models to fill in really help students that struggle with writing.  I feel that it really helps to boost their esteem because they don’t feel like they are failing all the time.

 After reading this article I really got excited about writing one of these poems and I have never enjoyed and never thought I would even think about enjoying poetry.  The I poems really give the writer a chance to step into someone else’s life and to visualize what it would have been like for them.  When I was reading this article I really wished that I was teaching an older grade so that I could have my students write I poems.  I have never really wanted to teach above 2nd grade but when activities like this are presented it makes me wish that I could really dive into them with my students and just get them so excited about writing.  I am really looking forward to writing an I poem.

Journal Invitation

Here is my completed Journal Invitation that I made for a kindergarten classroom.  I used the book Bug Safari by Bob Barner.

Journal Instructions

Cover of Journal

Journal Open  

Inside Cover/Rebus 

Ch. 6 Planning

This article really made me think about how important planning is for writing.  I know how important it is but it is something I have never really thought about teaching to students because all I have taught is 1st grade and kindergarten.  This article offered many suggestions for introducing planning in the classroom.  I think that teaching these planning models such as prewriting, inquiry, and strategies would greatly benefit the students in the class not only in elementary school but it would teach them skills that they will use on up into high school, college, and even into the real world.  I really thought the quote on pg. 123 was very interesting.  “students will acquire important knowledge about planning as a result of repeatedly using a prewriting graphic organizer….It is further assumed that students will come to value this knowledge and apply it on their own.”  I thought this quote pretty much sums up how teaching writing has been viewed.  I think with these new programs coming out like Empowering Writers and others, things are starting to change.  I feel that we can’t expect a child to learn just from seeing and hearing it.  I think they need to experience it.  I feel that this article really gives good information on how to let teacher help their students do that in their classrooms.  I was wondering if there is any way to use Writer’s Workshop or parts of it in Kindergarten. Maybe the conferencing?  This article really gave me some interesting information on planning that I had never thought of like having some of the activities they suggested for prewriting.  I always let children watch a film about our theme at the end of the week after we have been studying it and have been trying to write about it.  I never thought about using it to generate ideas for writing.  I do have the class sit down together and come up with ideas of something we could write about dealing with our theme and then we pick an idea together and brainstorm it.  I feel that I am using some of the planning ideas in my room but I want to know how much I should be using since I am in Kindergarten.