Margin Notes

CRAFT STUDIO: THINGS TO LOOK FORWARD TO BY SOPHIE BLACKWALL 

Sep
14

 

What I was reading:

Things to Look Forward To by Sophie Blackwell is a collection of small and large joys. She acknowledges that there are many big long-term achievements to look forward to but we can also look forward to the everyday things. She describes these as “things that will buoy our spirits and make us laugh and help us feel alive and that will bring others comfort and hope.”

 

Moves I noticed the author make:

The moves can change with every selection! Here is one example:

Rainbows 

If we are lucky, when the rain has stopped and a fine mist hangs in the air, sunlight might enter through tiny droplets, bend as it hits each surface, bounce off the back wall of the raindrop, and bend again as it exits. And if we happen to be standing facing away from the sun and raising our sights 42 degrees, that refracted, reflected, and dispersed light might form a shimmering rainbow. Then we can make a wish. 

 

Moves:

  • Uses the “if, and, then” format
  • Descriptive wording – “tiny droplets/shimmering rainbow”
  • Repetitive sounds – “bend/bounce/back”
  • Uses tiny details – “raising our sights 42 degrees”
  • Rule of three – “refracted, reflected, and dispersed”

 Possibilities for writers:

  • Notice something in the text.
  • Name what it is that you noticed.
  • Talk about what impact of what you noticed.
  • Choose a symbol in your own life and try using this writer’s craft to write about any 
  • Using the “if, and, then” format, write your own passage of Things to Look Forward to.
  • Zoom in a moment to write in descriptive, tiny details.
  • Try out the rule of three in a descriptive writing paragraph.

 

CHANGE THE GAME BY COLIN KAEPERNICK

Sep
05

”I think you can make a declaration in your heart about who you want to be. But then you have to reflect that in your actions. You have to make it real.”

You know the Nike ad that set shoes on fire and you have heard of the kneeling. What happened before? Colin Kaepernick’s memoir Change the Game tells his story of being a Black student, adopted by White parents and attending a largely White school. Everyone in his life is encouraging him to pursue baseball and accept one of the offers that come his way.  It’s the story of how it can be a challenge to go against the majority and listen to yourself instead.

Many readers will relate to the struggle of making a decision. Kaepernick says that “sometimes, one path seems easy. The sun in shining on it. It’s neatly paved. You could just take that path and go . . . but just because a path is easy, does that make it the right way to go? What if there’s something else waiting for you out there?” The surface story is about a young athlete choosing between two sports, but the messages are much deeper.

Beyond sports, it’s a story of a young Black man dealing with micro-aggressions and finding his voice. In one scene Kaepernick calls out a player for being racist and the coach tells him (Kaepernick) to back off. He narrates his reflection by saying “I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I was so angry. If I didn’t speak up, it felt like something would eat at me inside. But when I did speak up, apparently I was doing the wrong thing.” This internal conflict of when to speak up is an important theme to understanding Kaepernick’s decisions but also a meaningful feeling to name for young people. Exploring how one person controlled their internal conflict can be a powerful example for readers managing their inner battles.

I would recommend this graphic novel to readers ages 12 and up who enjoy non-fiction, activism and sports. It’s an accessible text that takes a reflective look at the story behind the athlete and activist we know, Colin Kaepernick.

To learn more about the work Kaepernick continues to do, visit Kaepernick Publishing whose mission is “to elevate a new generation of writers with diverse views and voices through the creation of powerful works of all genres that can build a better and more just world.”

 

FOUR EYES BY REX OGLE AND DAVE VALEZA

Jun
20

Four Eyes by Rex Ogle and Dave Valeza is a graphic novel dealing with the adjustments of starting middle school. The memoir focuses on when Rex begins a new year without his elementary friends due to re-drawn school catchment areas. He is faced with all the typical drama of locker combinations, height differences, trying to fit in and new academic expectations. As if that is not hard enough, Rex discovers that he needs glasses which his mother cannot afford.

This piece of Ogle’s story includes important themes around the topics of divorced families, poverty, bullying, friendships and school. Although very age-appropriate, he does not shy away from the realities of divorced parents fighting about money, the cruelness of peers and generational conflict.  At the same time, this realistic coming-of-age story encompasses the sweetness of grandparents, an accepting portrayal of stuttering and the joy of new friendships.

Ogle’s portrayal of how friendships change was powerful. People change and those who were your friends throughout elementary may not be the same as you grow up. The message that you don’t need to change to find a group of friends that show belonging, laughter and support is one that every middle grader needs to hear. This book would be a great addition to a grade 5 and 6 classroom library.

CHAOS THEORY BY NIC STONE

Jun
13

Nic Stone begins her book Chaos Theory with a beautiful letter to the reader where she shares a glimpse of her personal story and reasons for writing this book. It, along with the following page, offers several content warnings. She cautions readers about suicide and self-harm discussions as well as triggering content around “living with brain chemistry that functions in a way that occasionally obliterates your innate survival instincts.” Yet, her letter also details that these topics are exactly why she wrote the book. She hopes the story provides comfort for those who relate along with compassion and learning for those who are watching from the outside.

Chaos Theory follows Shelbi and Andy through a chance connection and weaves together their stories of struggle, friendship and love. These teens are dealt situations with alcoholism, abortion, bipolar diagnosis, divorce, and betrayal. Sounds heavy, right? It is. But it is also a positive view of seeking therapy, creating support systems, owning mistakes and taking action to live your best life.

Through a narrative mix of text messages and prose, the story shares the message that mental health is as important as physical health – and how the two are linked. The topics covered make this recommendation one for mature YA readers.

TRY THIS TOMORROW: SMASH BOOM BEST 

May
04

How do you pass the time on long car drives?  

My family listens to podcasts which is how we discovered APMStuidos’ Smash Boom Best. This is a debate podcast for families and kids. Each episode has guests debate two topics throughout three rounds. The judge is given points to award after each round to help decide the winner. This setup brought a lot of joy to our car ride as we paused the show to discuss and defend where our points would be given. Naturally, this discussion, opinion defense and evidence gathering led me to think about the classroom.  It would be a great resource for a grade 3 – 6 classroom.

How could this be used in the classroom? 

  • Use the scoreboard available on the Smash Boom Best website to track points and start discussions. 
  • Discuss the elements of a debate using the Listening Party Kit to see how the debaters defended their point of view.  
  • Adapt their lesson plans to have students create their own debate. 
  • Try out persuasive argument techniques with their section on how to build a strong argument.  
  • Practice creating and defending an opinion through listening to an episode, the scoreboard tracker and a verbal or written defense. 

There are so many ways to incorporate this educational and entertaining podcast into a classroom. Leave a comment if you give any a try!  

TRY THIS TOMORROW: POETRY MENTOR TEXTS

Apr
06

One of the most time-consuming tasks as a teacher is the gathering of mentor texts. For all your poetry mentor text needs, you must follow @Joseph_Fasano_ on Twitter. He is the host of a daily poetry thread. He begins the thread by posting a poem and includes the topics of the text. He, along with his almost 20K followers, continue the thread with posts of poems matching the topic.

Example poetry thread topics:

How to use this:

  • Explore how the same topic can produce varying themes
  • Make your own collection of texts on the same topic
  • On an online platform, follow the same pattern of the original poster starting a thread
  • Students pick a topic of interest and practice the skills you are currently teaching
  • Use the threads as research for a reading multigenre

I love it when readers come together to share texts and collaborate. Happy hunting!

TRY THIS TOMORROW:  HEXAGONAL THINKING

Feb
16

Betsy Potash, in her interview on Cult of Pedagogy, describes hexagonal thinking by saying that “while hexagonal thinking is not new in the world of business and innovation, it’s just making its way into the classroom. It’s a method for considering the connections between ideas and finding the nuances in those connections. If you’re looking for a fresh framework for discussion and critical thinking, this may be just the thing.” Her interview describes how to explain and use hexagonal thinking in both online and face-to-face settings.

Check out her description of the setup, the procedure, and the assessment of using hexagonal thinking. She even offers some ideas of variations and additions to this activity.

Helpful Links and Models:

Try hexagonal thinking in your class to make thinking visible!

 

Image credit

CRAFT STUDIO: A FIELD GUIDE TO THE HEART PAIRED WITH JASON REYNOLD’S “WRITE. RIGHT. RITE.” SERIES

Feb
02

What I Was Reading:

A Field Guide to the Heart by Georgia Heard and Rebecca Kai Dotlich is a compilation of poems written and collected by two friends discussing their experience during the pandemic through a reflection of life on the topics of love, comfort and hope.

As I was reading, I came across the poem “Flight” by Georgia Heard and was reminded of a video from Jason Reynold’s series “Write. Right. Rite.”  The website describes the series by saying “Reynolds shares his passion for storytelling while discussing topics like creativity, connection, and imagination. At the end of each video, Reynolds shares a prompt that encourages young people to work toward a specific idea.”

Here are the texts:

Tell the Story of Jason’s Tiny Neighborhood

Jason Reynolds, seventh National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, challenges kids to write about a tiny imagined neighborhood.

What Moves I Noticed:

  • The author uses descriptive language such as “oval window” and “snaking green river”
  • The author uses generic characters without detail such as “woman”, “man” and “teenage boy”
  • The author uses figurative language such as “constellation of ceiling cracks” and “roar of a plane”
  • The author uses a dash for punctuation
  • There is repetition in the sentence structure in the beginning of the stanzas marked by the commas and locations of the people

 

 

 

Opportunities for Writers:

Read the poem and watch the video.

  • Write whatever comes to mind
  • Using the structure of the poem, write about what other characters could be doing in the tiny houses
  • Use the beginning phrases of the poem but change the description of what they are doing. Try out some of your own figurative language!
  • Write about what you imagine when you look at houses you walk by or look down upon in a plane.

TRY THIS TOMORROW: IT STARTS WITH A PICTURE

Dec
15

I spent the very last day of work in June reading The Confidence to Write by Liz Prather. Why did it take several more months before I found her blog? This resource offers so many ideas to try tomorrow but I am picking “It Starts With a Picture” to link you over to her page.

The only material you will need is dice, students with cellphones (if you have any students without cell phones, you can give them the heads up to add some photos to MS Teams from home or bring in some physical copies), writer’s notebooks and a pencil.

Here is her explanation:

Final exams looming, pop-up Christmas parties sugaring the halls, kids ready for a break, and I’m looking for something light and fun that also develops students’ writing skills of observation, analysis, language, and image.

This lesson also helps students develop those “dig deeper” skills, mining a universal theme, which is discovered in this single moment in time.  This lesson may also translate into something longer like a vignette or personal essay, but I encourage students to try to write in whatever short form of poetry they want for sharing.

She gives you the setup, the prompts and an extension idea so you are ready to try this tomorrow.

TRY THIS TOMORROW: MOODY MENTORS

Dec
01

I love it when my nightly scrolling is productive. Twitter can be a fantastic resource for inspiration and sharing ideas. Kate McCook (@KMcCookEnglish) so generously shared her idea of moody mentors. Here are the steps she outlines:

  1. I decided to focus on how to add mood to our pieces.
  2. I pulled out two favorite mentor texts, the openings to the memoirs The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls & Educated by Tara Westover, and called them “Moody Mentor Texts”
  3. I handed students a list of mood words & we defined new ones.
  4. We identified moods in each piece.
  5. We identified writing moves each author used to create the moods we noticed.
  6. We reassessed our drafts to see if we had established mood (and what mood)
  7. We chose two “Moody Mini Moves” to emulate in our own drafts.

I loved this idea so I tracked down the two mentors listed. Here are some excerpts:

Text #1

The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls

Chapter 1: A Woman on the Street

I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a Dumpster. It was just after dark. A blustery March wind whipped the steam coming out of the manholes, and people hurried along the sidewalks with their collars turned up. I was stuck in traffic two blocks from the party where I was heading.

Mom stood fifteen feet away. She had tied rags around her shoulders to keep out the spring chill and was picking through the trash while her dog, a black-and-white terrier mix, played at her feet. Mom’s gestures were all familiar — the way she tilted her head and thrust out her lower lip when studying items of potential value that she’d hoisted out of the Dumpster, the way her eyes widened with childish glee when she found something she liked. Her long hair was streaked with gray, tangled and matted, and her eyes had sunk deep into their sockets, but still she reminded me of the mom she’d been when I was a kid, swan-diving off cliffs and painting in the desert and reading Shakespeare aloud. Her cheekbones were still high and strong, but the skin was parched and ruddy from all those winters and summers exposed to the elements. To the people walking by, she probably looked like any of the thousands of homeless people in New York City.

It had been months since I laid eyes on Mom, and when she looked up, I was overcome with panic that she’d see me and call out my name, and that someone on the way to the same party would spot us together and Mom would introduce herself and my secret would be out.

I slid down in the seat and asked the driver to turn around and take me home to Park Avenue.

The taxi pulled up in front of my building, the doorman held the door for me, and the elevator man took me up to my floor. My husband was working late, as he did most nights, and the apartment was silent except for the click of my heels on the polished wood floor. I was still rattled from seeing Mom, the unexpectedness of coming across her, the sight of her rooting happily through the Dumpster. I put some Vivaldi on, hoping the music would settle me down.

I looked around the room. There were the turn-of-the-century bronze-and-silver vases and the old books with worn leather spines that I’d collected at flea markets. There were the Georgian maps I’d had framed, the Persian rugs, and the overstuffed leather armchair I liked to sink into at the end of the day. I’d tried to make a home for myself here, tried to turn the apartment into the sort of place where the person I wanted to be would live. But I could never enjoy the room without worrying about Mom and Dad huddled on a sidewalk grate somewhere. I fretted about them, but I was embarrassed by them, too, and ashamed of myself for wearing pearls and living on Park Avenue while my parents were busy keeping warm and finding something to eat.

What could I do? I’d tried to help them countless times, but Dad would insist they didn’t need anything, and Mom would ask for something silly, like a perfume atomizer or a membership in a health club. They said that they were living the way they wanted to.

After ducking down in the taxi so Mom wouldn’t see me, I hated myself — hated my antiques, my clothes, and my apartment. I had to do something, so I called a friend of Mom’s and left a message. It was our system of staying in touch. It always took Mom a few days to get back to me, but when I heard from her, she sounded, as always, cheerful and casual, as though we’d had lunch the day before. I told her I wanted to see her and suggested she drop by the apartment, but she wanted to go to a restaurant. She loved eating out, so we agreed to meet for lunch at her favorite Chinese restaurant.

 

 

Text #2

 

Educated by Tara Westover

After Dad took up preaching against milk, Grandma jammed her fridge full of it. She and Grandpa only drank skim but pretty soon it was all there – two percent, whole, even chocolate. She seemed to believe this was an important line to hold.

Breakfast became a test of loyalty. Every morning, my family sat around a large square table and ate either seven-¬grain cereal, with honey and molasses, or seven-grain pancakes, also with honey and molasses. Because there were nine of us, the pancakes were never cooked all the way through. I didn’t mind the cereal if I could soak it in milk, letting the cream gather up the grist and seep into the pellets, but since the revelation we’d been having it with water. It was like eating a bowl of mud.

It wasn’t long before I began to think of all that milk spoiling in Grandma’s fridge. Then I got into the habit of skipping breakfast each morning and going straight to the barn. I’d slop the pigs and fill the trough for the cows and horses, then I’d hop over the corral fence, loop around the barn and step through Grandma’s side door.

On one such morning, as I sat at the counter watching Grandma pour a bowl of cornflakes, she said, “How would you like to go to school?”

“I wouldn’t like it,” I said.

“How do you know,” she barked. “You ain’t never tried it.”

She poured the milk and handed me the bowl, then she perched at the bar, directly across from me, and watched as I shoveled spoonfuls into my mouth.

“We’re leaving tomorrow for Arizona,” she told me, but I already knew. She and Grandpa always went to Arizona when the weather began to turn. Grandpa said he was too old for Idaho winters; the cold put an ache in his bones. “Get yourself up real early,” Grandma said, “around five, and we’ll take you with us. Put you in school.”

I shifted on my stool. I tried to imagine school but couldn’t. Instead I pictured Sunday school, which I attended each week and which I hated. A boy named Aaron had told all the girls that I couldn’t read because I didn’t go to school, and now none of them would talk to me.

“Dad said I can go?” I said.

“No,” Grandma said. “But we’ll be long gone by the time he realizes you’re missing.” She sat my bowl in the sink and gazed out the window.

Grandma was a force of nature – impatient, aggressive, self-possessed. To look at her was to take a step back. She dyed her hair black and this intensified her already severe features, especially her eyebrows, which she smeared on each morning in thick, inky arches. She drew them too large and this made her face seem stretched. They were also drawn too high and draped the rest of her features into an expression of boredom, almost sarcasm.

“You should be in school,” she said.

“Won’t Dad just make you bring me back?” I said.

 

 

Text #3:

Here is a link to a blog post on mood with more moody mentor texts from poetry and pop cultures videos. The clip from One of Us is Lying could spark a book talk!

If you have another moody mentor, leave it in the comments!