One Little Word Wednesday: Thread

          Kids really say the most amazing things. Yesterday in a third grade class, I introduced the students to writing snapshots. I used Barry Lane's ideas about how details are like boxes inside boxes and writers zoom in with their words like photographers zoom in with their cameras. I read aloud samples from wonderful authors and shared some of my own writing. Using a slide show of images on the smart board as inspiration, the kids made their first attempts at writing their own snapshots. It wasn't easy for them. I didn't expect it be. I told them that they had to try to push through their struggle, like lifting a heavy weight or running a long distance. They had to try. All the students shared one sentence from their snapshot. I heard similes, great hooks, and complex sentences. Then they shared their whole snapshot with someone near them. After the lesson, two excited boys came up to me before heading out to lunch recess. The first one said, "I know what I could do! I could go back to my book I'm making and add a snapshot and put a simile in it." I was stunned. This young writer was beginning to weave together all the threads of the lessons we had done together throughout the trimester. The other little boy plum blew me away. He said, "Writing is fun. I used to like gym but now I like writing better." He actually thought that writing was more fun than gym. I couldn't agree more.

She Still Needs Me

Sam's bedside table

When we picked Sam up at college before Christmas, after she had finished her last exam, she was sick with tonsillitis. She had been to the health clinic on campus a few days before with 103 degree temperature. They prescribed Amoxil, the same medicine she had taken in liquid form for her ear infections as a preschooler. Once at home, Sam complained about swallowing the fat pills and how much they hurt going down. The pills were pretty big. When I peered down my daughter’s throat with the flashlight, her tonsils looked like pieces of cauliflower, all inflamed and purulent. Her right and left tonsils met in the middle, touching her uvula. When she talked, her voice had the same hypo-nasal quality she used to have when she got strep back in middle school. When Sam was in sixth grade, she had a few months where she got strep over and over. I could always hear it in her voice before the sore throat would even start. I’d take her to the doctor, they would run the strep test, and it would come out negative. Within two days, her fever would spike to 102 or 103 and back to the doctor we would go. She couldn’t wouldn’t swallow pills so we had to get the pink liquid.

Sam spent the better part of winter break in bed sleeping, sipping tea, and eating pudding. She seemed to get better for a while and then after Christmas, her symptoms returned. Off we went to the urgent care on a Saturday night and this time she got a Z-pack. More days in bed, sleeping, texting her friends, and sipping 7-Up with a straw. The nice thing about her being sick was that I didn’t have to worry about where she was. She didn’t leave her crap all over the house. She didn’t demand to use the car to go shopping in Toledo or visit friends in Ann Arbor. She even spent New Year’s Eve at home sitting on the couch watching Dick Clark. This may sound weird but it was one of the pleasantest breaks I’ve spent with my daughter in recent memory. It felt good to take care of her. And she didn't mind me doing it. 

Mentor Sentence Monday: More Brian Selznick

Amazon link

Another one of my favorite books by Brian Selznick is The Boy of a Thousand Faces. His sentences are fun to imitate and give young writers great models for creating more complex sentences of their own. The opening line from The Boy of a Thousand Faces is a wonderful hook to mimic.

Selznick’s words:

After the crowd lit their torches and chased the phantom into the river, after the hunchback met his death in the darkness of the tower, and after the creature disappeared back into its black lagoon, Alonzo King went to bed.

 Sentences I generated using Selznick’s words as inspiration:

After the grandparents finished their cheesecake and coffee, after the cousins played unruly games of Scrabble, euchre, and spoons, and after the aunts and daughters washed up most of the dishes, everyone left and house went quiet.

After her hair was washed and conditioned, after it was dried and straightened, and after the blond strands were sprayed in place, Samantha sat in the red chair in the living room and waited for the doorbell.

Thankful Thursday

Ten Things I Am Grateful For

One Little Word Wednesday: Thread

This is actually a photo of my thread drawer
after editing it in Picnik. 

I was supposed to get myself to bed early on Tuesday evening. Didn’t happen. The phone bill arrived in the mail. My son was significantly over on his minutes which necessitated a discussion. My daughter was considering studying abroad next year. More discussion. The Iowa Caucuses were yesterday evening. Lots more discussion between me and my husband. I had planned to spend a quiet evening reading blogs, writing comments, and composing a post for today that had something to do with thread, which is my one little word.  My brain was fried from all the talk. As I wrote, I began to think about the nature of oral discussion and how different it is from texts, tweets, emails, or writing comments on a blog. 

Comments on blogs, even when threaded (ahhhh, there is the link to thread) feel very different than verbal conversations. Talking with living breathing people can be tiring. Then again, maybe it was the topics and who I was talking with that drained my desire to write or do anything else on Tuesday. While trying to compose this post I was interrupted by both of my teenagers several times. I guess I should have been glad they wanted to talk to me at all. Then my husband decided I should watch him watch the TV then pouted when I didn't drop everything for this obviously thrilling activity. By the end of the evening my energy was thread thin.

An Easy Writing Celebration: Gallery Walk

I can’t stop thinking about Tytiana. Right after Thanksgiving, I started a fresh coaching cycle in a third grade class during their writing workshop. We only had a few weeks until Christmas vacation and I wanted the students to have the opportunity to celebrate their writing before the break. The students, their teacher, and I decided to use their quick writes about “hands” and turn them into finished pieces.  Some kids wrote about their own hands, the hands of a parent or sibling, or Santa’s hands. The format for the celebration was very simple. The kids put their fancied-up “hand” writing in the middle of their cleared off desks then stood quietly nearby. We had invited another class, administrators, secretaries, and some teachers to attend the gallery walk the week before.  As guests arrived, they signed in and browsed the pieces at their leisure. They were free to pick up the writing, read it, and ask the writers questions. After about fifteen minutes or so, the teacher and I asked the attendees, as a group, what stuck with them about the pieces they had read or seen.  The guests noticed that even though everyone had written about hands, all the pieces were different.  Many of the visitors noticed that the writers had used similes. Lots of compliments. Lots of smiles.  Then our visitors were thanked and they departed. Quick and painless. As soon as everyone left, the class, their teacher, and I gathered at the carpet to debrief. The kids were bursting with excitement. One little girl, Tytiana, a decidedly reluctant writer, was smiling so wide I thought her cheeks were going to pop.

“Tytiana, you are smiling so much! Are you happy?”

(enthusiastic head nod)

“Did it feel good to share your writing with Mr. P’s class?”

(another enthusiastic head nod)

“Did you want to tell why it felt so good?”

(animated head nod and a big breath in)

“Wellllllllll, this girl read myyyyyyy writing.”

“So, why was this so wonderful for you, Tytiana?”

(big breath in)

“Welllll, she is in my cheernastics class annnnnnnd, usually  . . . she doesn’t even notice me. Today . . . she did!”

I looked over at Tytiana’s teacher biting my lip and swallowing hard. Tytianna continued.

“She never even talked to me before. (pause) Cuz, IIIIIIIII’m like on the bottommmm of the pyramid, yunno, and she’s on top cuz she’s smaller.”

Tytiana struggles in so many ways. But that day was different. Tytiana wasn’t struggling. She was noticed. She was noticed and smiled at and respected. And by the way, her writing has amazing voice!

Mentor Sentence Monday: More Hugo Cabret

Text for word cloud came from page 165 of
The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian
Selznick

I've always loved the look and feel of Brian Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret. It is one of those books that rests beautifully in your lap and the black and white pages are delicious to turn. Sorry, but there is no way I would want to read Hugo as an ebook. The structure of Selznick’s sentences and paragraphs are also perfect for imitating.

The following sentences are from the opening paragraph to the eighth chapter on page 165.

After making his morning rounds with the clocks, Hugo showed up at the toy booth the next day prepared to work. He could feel the cogs and wheels in his head spinning in different directions. On moment he felt hopeful that he'd get his notebook back, the next he felt angry and resentful.

The following are sentences I generated using Selznick’s patterns:

After collecting the empty cups, dessert plates, and pop cans downstairs, Mary headed to the basement prepared to face an even bigger mess.

After making the rounds at the usual bars, Ray showed up at the Someday Saloon prepared to deepen his level of inebriation. He could feel the boozy blanket begin to warm and calm his brain.

After making their morning rounds with the litter boxes, Roxy, Fred, and Tiger showed up in the kitchen prepared to eat breakfast.