Spartanburg Writing Project

I recently, and rather reluctantly, joined Twitter.  One of my favorite things is following Donalyn Miller, aka The Book Whisperer.  I hope I can grow up to be just like her!  She, and others, tweet posts from some of their chats.  Recently, during a Title Talk chat, @acorgill tweeted, “We think of the child first, the book second.   That’s when we’re most likely to make the match and grow a reader.”  Well said, @acorgill, even thought I’ve never met you.  I love how she said we would “grow a reader.”  I retweeted it so all my followers could see her words of wisdom.

The real life application of her insight came to me this week.  In reading with one of my first grade students, I decided to try a benchmark book called Anna’s New Glasses.  In looking at the book ahead of time, I thought it might be a challenging one for her.  My student herself has glasses-cute as they can be!  She (or her mom) picked out a snazzy new pair and color coordinate all her cute outfits with them.  The only thing is, well, she doesn’t like to wear her glasses.  She says they make her face look crooked.   Of course, they don’t but somehow she frequently has “forgotten” or  ”lost” her glasses.   As she previewed the book, read it and then discussed it with me, I was amazed at how she was able to connect with the character Anna.  She even said, “Well she probably thinks they make her face look crooked.”  And when the character Anna wore them to school, my student even said, “Well everybody probably told her how cute they were but she didn’t want to wear them.”  Of course, based on her own background and experiences, this student inferred and made a connection with the story beyond the text she read.

Even though this level of text was challenging for my student, the was a match there which set her up for success.  Book choice is something we often give lip service to, but this week I could see firsthand just how important it is to think of the child first and the book second.

“How’d you learn to write like that?”

“I dunno.  I read a lot.  I mean, like a lot.”

A few weeks ago, I overheard this snippet of conversation between my middle school daughter/ aspiring author and her grandfather.  For Christmas, she wrote a piece for each of her grandparents and immediate family.  She is a SJWP gal, by the way.  As is becoming the trend at our home these days, she didn’t ask my opinion or advice on any of the pieces.  I looked around and I noticed well, there wasn’t one of these gifts under the tree for me.  Clearly,  I’m not #1 anymore.  But I was tickled when I read all the pieces and thought again how glad I am she loves to read and write.

Later that night just before bed, I got my present.  It was a piece of her writing, dedicated to dear ol’ Mom.  It was a novella, of sorts, that she’d been working on since last summer and had vehemently denied my previous requests to read.    As I read the short chapters, I was amazed at the way she’d strung words together to paint pictures, chosen words to convey a message and kept me flipping pages right up until the end of Chapter 14.  And I thought to myself, “Huh-where’d she learn to do that?”

And then I thought about the volume of writing she does-not just at school but on her own.  She writes a lot.  She writes every day,  jots down notes in her journals and walks around typing in reminders and quotes she hears in her iPod.  I remembered just what she’d said that very night to her grandfather.  “I read a lot.  I mean, like, a lot.”

Later in the week, I finally gave in to her pleading and started reading two books she’d declared “the best books ever.”  It’s a YA trilogy, Divergent and Insurgent.  As I read through the pages, I kept thinking how much they really sounded like her writing.  I could see a similarity in styles and craft.  So that’s where she learned it, I thought to myself.  The books were quite good, by the way.

If we want our students to write with a strong voice, we must provide students with the opportunities to read writing, think about writing, talk about the way the author conveyed the message and share their own writing.  We must give them classrooms with social interactions that enable them to develop as readers and writers.  It’s easy to sum it all up.  We have to let them read and write-and to borrow her middle school voice, “…and I mean, like, a lot.”

Jaime Dawson

As our school prepares for our annual Family Literacy Night, I found myself thinking about how I became a reader.

I can’t remember a time I didn’t like to read.  I don’t remember learning to read or making a conscious effort to read .  I just remember always thinking of myself as a reader.  In thinking about a book that I recall as my favorite, I can’t pick one.  It would be like asking me to choose which of my children I love more.  I just can’t do it.

But I do remember going to the library each week in elementary school to check out books.  And I remember that our media specialist always had us line up and on the way back to the classroom, she stopped each one of us to look at which books we’d chosen.  She always asked about the books when you returned them and why you liked it or didn’t.  Every chance I got, I checked out this one book, over and over again.  It was a Serendipity book by Stephen Cosgrove.

Now thirty years later, I can’t tell you the specifics about the book or why I was so enamored over it.  And of course, I checked out other books each week too. But I can tell you this media specialist never once chastised me for reading the same book over and over again.  She never made me write it down on a reading log or complete a book report on it.  She never questioned if I was really reading that book or if it was too easy for me.  She let me be happy reading the book I wanted to read, as often as I wanted to read it.  She engaged in authentic conversations with me about books.

I doubt as an elementary student that I spent too much time thinking about the job of a media specialist.  I just thought she was a nice lady who liked books and was good at keeping them all organized.  I didn’t see her as an integral part of my life as a reader and certainly had no idea that her gentle, quiet comments would make a difference in the big picture.  But it did.

The reason I can’t remember when I became a reader is because I always have been one.  The other adults and important people in my life gave me opportunities to read what I was interested in and let me read as much as I wanted.  As I think about our school’s literacy night, it’s not the book about the purple sea monster that stands out in my mind so much as it is thankfulness for the culture of reading that we as teachers have the opportunity to create at our schools.   The word serendipity means “a gift for discovery; a natural gift of making pleasant, valuable and useful discoveries by accident.”  Every day we have the opportunity to share our love of reading.  And that is serendipity for all our students.

Jaime Dawson

I always am amazed at how energized and excited I am after spending the afternoon at SWP Fall Renewal. I know that at first it seems overwhelmingly to come to a conference straight after school, but when I have that cup of coffee and those delicious snacks, I’m ready! 

This year, I co-presented with Sheila Ingle. She did a reading of the first page of her book Courageous Kate that was awesome! I could see teachers in the session, saying, “My students would love that!”

I also presented on Digital Literacy and the Common Core. I was amazed at the number of teachers who wanted so much to include digital literacy in their classroom and were excited about some of the ways we discussed! When I asked whether these methods and technologies would be approved by their school, only 2 teachers raised their hands. This is the hardest part of being a teacher right now. You know what  authentic learning experiences are, but often you can’t implement them because of budget restraints. 

It is good to be able to come together at a renewal conference and get fresh ideas and be reminded that we aren’t alone in this journey! 

It’s so easy as writers and teachers of writing to get stuck in the same pattern of writing instruction or revising strategies. I was reminded today of the power of the strategy never-ending story to help students’ ideas start flowing. 

How We Did It

We used dry erase sentence strips and each of the 5 students wrote down a hook or opening line of a story and then placed it on the floor. We then took each opening sentence or hook and went around the table adding one line to the story. The person sitting to the left of the person after 2-3 rounds had the task of ending or closing out the story. Each student shared; each student wrote and President Obama ended up in three of the stories. Students were laughing and enjoying the writing process together. It helped us zoom out and remember that writing is fun and enjoyable and that there’s really no telling where a story could go!

Follow-Up

We read Remy Charlip’s Fortunately, which showed us that there are some authors who have structured this activity a little more and published that work! 

By Merianna Neely