Readings for 11/29

While I certainly do agree that we need to teach people to consume media critically, I would have to say that the article clearly came with an agenda. The author stated the need for children to "challenge" the standard ideas presented in their entertainment. Instead of challenge, I prefer to think that we should teach our children to be critical. As long as they are thinking about their choices, we should be accepting of the choices they make. Even if that means they choose something we wish they wouldn't. (As a parent, I must state here that as long as my children live in my house I will not permit them to make dangerous choices. But for the rest of them, I share my opinion, present my arguments, and then try to bite my tongue.)

Jill and Julie have both written about how they felt that old media should be shown for what it is: outdated. We can use those old entertainment vehicles to talk about how our attitudes about "others" have changed as well as how much work there is to do. We can talk about how culture influences what we, as a society, create. Rather than encouraging children to rage against the machine (as if because someone else thought of it, it must be bad), we must teach them to be part of the discourse that creates our society. We must teach them that they can also contribute to the art of our society and not just be consumers of it.

Let's face it: much of the things the author is complaining about are the direct result of our current culture. If you reach a certain age and you don't have a spouse, you're judged. If you don't have the right "look," something must be wrong with you. If you can't consume all the junk that's out there to consume, you're not as important. These messages are not always embedded into entertainment in a nefarious plot, but they are part of the fabric of the culture we live in. Sometimes marketing figures into the decision-making, and sometimes the artists simply aren't aware of the biases they bring to the table. That's why critical consuming is important.

While I was reading the article it occurred to me that the teacher could also have brought in written versions of the fairy tales to compare them. In the earliest versions available of fairy tales you can see some of the same stereotypes. It would be great to have some time to talk about why those stereotypes existed and even to bring in some history surrounding when the tales were first written down. The people who did the writing brought their own biases to the stories they recorded from storytellers.

There is a lot of information out there about the media our children consume and the toys they play with. I could go on forever. As I get older though, I get a little more mellow about all the injustices heaped upon our youth by evil corporations. If we don't want it, we need to find something more positive to replace it rather than just complaining about it. I find a lot of parents are unwilling to do that, and it's something outside of my control. It's just too easy to go with the flow. I sign petitions and do what I can to change the flow, but I can really only influence the consumers in my own house.

Video Editing

Is anyone else as excited about learning to edit videos as I am? While I can think of plenty of ways to use it in the classroom, I'm more interested in it from a personal perspective. I have tons of video that we've taken over the years, none of which has ever been viewed or edited. I realize that the tool we're using isn't that fancy, but just to learn the basics is exciting to me.

I hope everyone has a great break. I won't be able to do much school work over the break, so I'm predicting a little bit of a panic for myself when we all get back.

Readings for 11/15

Igoa

Powerful stuff.  We have a child in our field placement who, until the beginning of this year, spoke only Arabic.  It's amazing the progress he has made.  He hasn't really gone through the silent phase described in the chapters while we've been in class, but I'm not sure how long he was here before school started or what his background truly is.  Instead, he learned a few key phrases that didn't always have a meaning that made sense in that context, but he's always had SOMETHING to say.

I traveled to China as a 10-year-old and spent a day in a school while I was there.  How confusing!  I knew I was only going to be there for a day so it wasn't so tough, but I can only imagine what it feels like to be someplace where you are trapped inside your own head, unable to communicate.  I couldn't help but agree with the section about hurrying them up so they won't fall behind. Students can only learn what they are able to learn at a given point in their lives. Rushing only makes things take longer.

Hill

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what I'm supposed to be getting from this reading other than an example of what can be done with different forms of literacy.  If you'd like to see the actual multiliteracies map that's being discussed, I found it at an Australian website. It's interesting stuff, but maybe I'm not getting much out of it because I'm happy to try anything and everything to get my students excited about literacy in all its forms. I don't need convincing!

Evans

I saved my favorite for last. As the parent of two technology natives, I find that critical literacy is, well, more critical than ever. They don't watch much commercial television, so when they do get to see commercials (which they love--it's like frosting on a cupcake for them) we have to explain their purpose because they just don't get it. It's now become something of a habit to describe why a particular "text" has been created and what we're supposed to get out of it. I think many children in their age group would surprise adults with their critical literacy savvy. They've all already learned that the cool pictures on the web page are only trying to sell them something and don't really go to anything interesting.

The discussion on popular culture intrigued me. Personally, I don't like to see commercial stuff in school. I'd rather figure out what's so compelling about the commercial characters and products and create that for the classroom.

I also see loads of potential in some of the newer immersive instruction ideas. Augmented-reality "games" (which are really just ads right now) have some real potential to be educational and assessment tools. Allowing students to "paint" their knowledge onto real space would be particularly powerful for any studies involving the local community or the school. There are people working on educational versions of augmented reality, but I think it would be more useful as another way for students to demonstrate their learning than for them to be the recipients of a prepackaged reality. As far as I know, there aren't any handy tools for doing this with students, but I'm sure it's coming.

One thing I wonder about is reading. Futurists have been predicting for years that someday only a small portion of the population will learn to read because the rest just won't need it. We'll have other ways to get the information. The newest forms of literacy do seem to point in that direction, even if it's far off. What do you think?

MGRP

It's almost done! We just have to put our poster presentation together. Yeah!

The creative aspects of this project were a struggle for me. You'll all see my lame attempt at simple coloring on Monday. I was NOT the child who spent hours with coloring books. Despite my artistic difficulties, I learned a lot and I'm glad we did it. I do think that the genre pieces would be more powerful for some of the topics chosen by the students in Allen's book. "Spelling" doesn't really lend itself to creativity that also showcases some of the research results. At least I didn't find it to be so. Lynne didn't really have that problem, so maybe it's just me!

Everyone remember to turn your clocks back tonight and get an extra hour of sleep. You'll need it for the final MGRP push!

Readings for 11/1

MGRP

Chapters 5 & 7 in Allen's book cover both how to make writing come alive and some examples of how to use the arts for a multi-genre research paper.  While I appreciated the tips in the writing chapter, there are probably many more books available with even more information.  I did like that the author did a rewrite for her students so they could see the process.  So often we only show children the steps to the final product but not the process, with all its bumps and decisions.  I certainly see myself encouraging students to include the arts, but I'm not sure how to incorporate them into my own MGRP.  Lynne has ideas simply flowing out of her.  It will be a bit of a challenge for me, I'm afraid.

Seedfolks

I've already read this book twice, so I confess to skimming.  If I end up with a little spare time before class on Monday I'll do a more detailed rereading.  The first time I read it I remember thinking that I would have preferred someone warn me about the organization of the book.  I went in looking for a full narrative that would bring in all the voices in some big, final ending.  I had to reread the book with an adjusted perspective in order to really enjoy it.  This book is more a collection of vignettes about the same space.  There is some small narrative movement that gathers steam at the end, but by that point in the book I almost wanted time to slow way down so I could live with the characters through the whole growing season.

Readings for 10/25

MGRP

I literally laughed out loud while reading that poetry was a good way to ease into writing. What? Is Allen ON something? There are very few poems that touch me when I read them and I certainly don't like to write them. Perhaps I'm just insensitive. Perhaps my love of sci-fi leaves me predisposed to ignore anything that doesn't happen far, far away. I don't know.

Luckily, Allen presented some very doable forms of poetry I think I can probably work with. We'll see, I guess!

Invitations

I first learned about invitations for the tradebooks class, which I took two years ago. I remember the things we read from Van Sluys. I think invitations are a bit hard to wrap your head around, particularly when there's so much other stuff that has to happen every day at school. Once you try making one I think you'll see where they can have a place. When I took the class the instructor insisted that our invitations be on a social justice issue. The process of creating the invitation was worthwhile, though I have no clue if what I think will be interesting will be interesting to students.

One thing that struck me as I was reading: differentiation. When Lynne and I did our presentation on differentiation last spring we learned that differentiation is not about giving everyone a fun activity, but about making sure each student learns a certain minimum (and much more) by engaging them in the way they learn best. This brings me to to the invitations. I think it would be very tempting to create fun invitations that really didn't involve much deep learning. The point of the invitations is to give students the opportunity to get even deeper into the thinking process regardless of the topic.

I really enjoyed making one on a social justice issue two years ago, so I'm hoping I can do one with some other topic to get some broad practice.

Readings for 10/18

Mmmm, Donuts...

The Powell and Davidson article, "The Donut House..." made me think about how, when trying to spread a good idea around, the true benefit gets diluted. How many of us have gone on a field trip, maybe taken notes or drawings during the field trip, written or drawn up a report, and maybe written a thank-you note? The field trips of my youth certainly weren't wasted, but they weren't milked for everything good that could have come out of them. The classroom in the article didn't just go on a field trip, they investigated, explored, and recreated the process of setting up a business. The teacher made the effort to sustain the activity until real work (aka, learning) happened. While I don't know this for a fact, I'm guessing the teacher made sure that props and equipment were available during all free play times so that her students could continue to refine their ideas and extend them in new ways.

To me the approach in the article is reminiscent of some of the philosophies behind the schools in Reggio Emilia, Italy. You may have seen schools advertised as "Reggio-inspired" and the like, and there have been attempts to bring the philosophies to the US with varying degrees of success. The students in those schools study things, and much of their learning revolves around the things they are studying. Young children are expected to take notes, build models, and have ideas that the teachers use to extend the learning as far as it can go. Through their study topics they cover literacy, math, science, music, art, and history. Isn't that more interesting that studying the letter of the day or writing whatever the teacher tells you to write? I think so. Typically, they study something close enough to their school that they can walk to it, much like the doughnut shop in the article.

MGRP

Allen's book on multigenre research papers has so far been practical and filled with good examples. I'm feeling a little better about the genre part of our paper, but it's still scary for me. One thing that stood out, that I'm sure the author didn't intend, was the internet portion of one chapter. Note to self: If I write a book, don't be specific about technology! Any teacher following the advice in the book due to ignorance would find herself losing credibility with her students. This is the second book in the last few months that has had the same outdated tech problem, so I would encourage anyone who publishes anything to be less specific.

Spelling

Lynne and I are working on spelling (aka "Grappling with Spelling Instruction") for our MGRP.  We're still grappling.  So far, it's been pretty interesting, but it's a little frustrating that there aren't any answers.  If anyone's got data on what spelling methods are best, we haven't found it.  We have found some interesting and useful tidbits, though.  I'm going to keep them secret so you can't sleep when we share with the class after the papers all get turned in.  Because you all care about spelling, don't you?  I thought so!

How to Save Your Blog for Printing

I found a great tip for printing! You can, of course, print straight from the screen, but if you're printing at home you'll waste a lot of ink and paper. Try this:


1. Go to your blog, but use the following as the URL: http://blogname.blogspot.com/search?max-results=1000
(tip: change "blogname" to be the first part of the URL for your blog).


2. In your browser, save the web page. If there's a "complete" option, choose that because it'll get all the graphics you've put in your posts. I'd tell you where save is, but since I don't know where it is on every browser I'm not sure. Look for a Tools menu. In Chrome it's under the wrench icon at the upper right part of the screen.


3. Open up the file in Word. You will, most likely, want to get rid of the background so you don't waste ink.  That's under Page Layout-->Page Color-->No Color.


Blogger does have an export feature, but it dumps xml. I couldn't find an easy way to translate that into a file for humans to read (though if you like xml you'll like the dump, it's detailed). If you wanted to back up your blog, you'd want to use that export feature because you can directly import it back.

Readings for 10/4

By the time I'm writing this about a third of the cohort has already posted, so I think we've covered the Hale chapters pretty well. I got as much out of these chapters as I did the previous three. This book makes me want to try everything.

I'd like to focus on Karen's article. As someone who feels connected to multiple ways of looking at young children's writing, I felt a bit angry at how the teacher felt forced to do things against her personal philosophy because that's what the people above wanted. I am reminded of the Teacher Town Hall on MSNBC last weekend when several teachers were grateful that teachers had even been asked to join the conversation. It seems to me that while it may be up to governments and administrators to determine what gets taught, teachers need to have some input on the how and when based on what researches have found out.

Karen's article surprised me in my own response a bit. For example, I didn't realize how strongly I felt about teaching children when they are mentally and physically ready to learn until I read about Ashley. There are still some countries that test children for school readiness by having them copy an adult do a specific motion that crosses the midline. The motion varies slightly depending on the culture, but children who cannot do it wait until they can do it and children who can go to school. I can demonstrate for anyone who's curious the next time we're together. It's very interesting, and studies seem to indicate that this simple test is a pretty good indicator of readiness for school for a variety of reasons. I don't want anyone to take this to mean that kids who aren't ready in those ways aren't teachable. What I think is that it means they need more exposure and time to play with literacy in a less formal way than what many schools in this country provide.

But I think I'm a bit of a mishmash when it comes to the various discourses. Following the chart on page 342, I'm probably least in line with the "Skills and Mastery" discourse, at least for young children. Giving kids lots of exposure to lots of different kinds of literacy when they are very young is still, I'm convinced, the way to go. I may have posted this before, but for anyone interested in a parent-friendly discussion on getting children ready to read, I highly recommend Mem Fox's Reading Magic. Sadly, the book's been overhyped in a bad way and Mem herself would be the first to tell you she doesn't like some of the "magical" claims that have been made about her book. But it's a quick read and worth it.

My Pen

Several of you have asked about my pen. As I write on special paper, it records what's going on in the room. I can, at any point, tap on where I've written and the audio will play back. It's like a tape recorder with bookmarks. I can put my notes on the computer so they're searchable. You can also buy software that transcribes your notes so you can use them with word processing software, but I'm too cheap to do that. You can share the notes as .pdfs or as a pencast where the audio is also available. You can do this in a secure way by requiring that everyone who will access your pencast create an account with Livescribe, the company that makes the pen. There is also translation software and some cute apps. I can show you the piano app sometime if we're all bored.

I know that a newer version is out now, so I did a little research. My pen, which is functionally identical to the new one of the same storage size (4GB), is now a lot cheaper. It's called the Pulse pen and that link goes to the cheapest price I found. The new version is called the Echo. As I mentioned, it's functionally the same, but it's black and has more standard connectors (standard headphone jack and mini USB, to be precise). There is also a bigger storage size pen available that also has removable storage. It's also an Echo, just 8GB instead of 4. You get 100 hours of recording for every gigabyte of storage, so the smaller pens will most definitely get you through a semester.

You do have to buy special paper. Along with the Echo pens, it's available at Target and Best Buy. There's no benefit to buying the paper at Amazon because it's the same price and you have to pay shipping if you're not a Prime member. Don't forget, you're supposed to list online purchases in your taxes now, so you're not even really getting away with sales tax. I could not find the Pulse pen the last time I went to Target, so I'm sure they're phasing those out.

Let me know if you have questions!

Readings for 9/27

Wow, what a practical bunch of chapters! So many of my questions were answered. The try-its seemed very powerful (and a familiar concept to anyone with a Brownie Girl Scout in their lives). Hale has mentioned avoiding practicing crafts in isolation, and I think the try-it concept is a good way to focus on the craft with a safe space to muck around with it a bit while avoiding too many boring examples of the same thing. Having a small library of crafts for students to refer back to when they need a little inspiration can only be a good thing.

The "research" thing was a bit difficult for me to grasp at first, and I think it was simply terminology. When I think of "research" I think of something that's long and arduous. While I recognize that I have to pay attention to students' writing development at all points, it took me some time to understand that a portion of the research was on-the-spot during the conference. I'm not sure what word I would have used to describe that part of the process other than "research," so I can't even claim to have a better idea.

Chapters 7-9 were just what I needed to clarify much of what I had been wondering about.

Spelling

I am struggling with the whole spelling thing. From my own personal experience I can see that traditional spelling tests are not helpful to all students. Unless a teacher is paying attention and willing to work individually with students who don't transfer their knowledge of spelling into the wider world, it's wasted time for those kids. All the other kids usually already know how to spell the words on the list anyway.

On the other hand, I subbed in a 5th grade classroom today where very few words at all were spelled correctly. Some of the kids could not even correctly copy words that the student teacher put on the projector for everyone to write down. We're not talking about big, challenging words. We're talking about words like, "social," "studies," "bored," "lunch," and, my personal favorite of the day, "fart." Yes, bodily functions were misspelled right and left in addition to more socially acceptable words.

So what to do? When you get a whole class of children who are so clearly behind in their ability to spell, what's the right course of action? They were all able to write sentences and even some decent-sized paragraphs, so it's not as though they were completely behind in all language arts areas. At what point should their poor spelling be corrected? And what's the best way to do that without stifling creativity? Am I back to traditional spelling tests? Word pattern study? What? I'm not sure I'd feel right as a teacher if I didn't at least help students improve their spelling somewhat.

Any ideas?

Readings for 9/20

Initial Thoughts
The first chapter in Crafting Writers scared me a bit. I don't journal, and now I'm supposed to write on my own in order to improve my writing instruction? I'm supposed to keep a writer's notebook? Yikes! The most writing I ever do these days is e-mail and grocery lists. Clearly, I have a lot to learn.

The Important Things
The most important thing I got out of the first six chapters is that we need to teach children to craft while they are writing instead of editing after the fact. I know that most of what I learned about writing had to do with editing, so it's completely out of my comfort zone. But I felt Hale had many concrete ideas to offer me in support.

The idea of specific craft was a tad foreign to me, I must admit. But once I learned that my students and I could name these bits of writing anything we wanted (assuming some smarty-pants hadn't beaten us to it and put it on standardized tests), I felt some relief. I have no clue why I felt this way, since I like things well-defined and I'm a rule-follower. Perhaps the idea of hunting down runaway crafts and naming them to make them ours made it sound more fun than memorizing a bunch of rules for how to make writing better.

What also calmed me down a bit was the notion that it's not about using all the "right" bits of craft but about playing with them to get the affect that you want. Variety seems to be key, rather than there being a perfect method, at least with young writers who are still learning the basics. What a relief!

Personally, I really appreciated the chapter on primary writers. As someone with experience working with young children, it's nice to see them given some props. They are so proud of their work and so fearless in their attempts it's good to know that we're supposed to encourage all those visual explorations. I wish there had been a short discussion on play. There have been several studies that show that the more imaginative a child's play when using the simplest of props the better writer that child will be as they get older. Supporting that inner narrative would seem to be an important step toward developing skill in writing. Has anyone named  "Once Upon a Time" as a specific craft yet? I'd like first dibs.

Unanswered Questions
Despite feeling a little better about this whole writing thing, I still have questions. These may seem stupid to some of you, but I'm a details person and these things still seem nebulous to me.

What exactly is a writer's notebook? Is it just stuff I've written? Do I put whatever I want in there, like collections of things? I sort of think yes, but I'm really not sure. What am I supposed to write?

Is writer's workshop a predefined sort of program? A philosophy? Or is it just a collection of activities we call "writer's workshop?" Are there mandatory parts? Do they go in a certain order? If I walked into a classroom, would I be able to tell after a day or so if they did writer's workshop if they didn't use that name?

Discounted NAEYC Membership for Students

If you're planning on sticking with the lower grades, you might think about joining the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). It targets teachers of preschool to age 8. A student membership is only $35 (normally $80) and you get all the same benefits. You get discounted tickets to conferences, their journal, and sometimes other benefits. Have your student ID number handy. I am guessing that as long as your student ID remains valid you can sign up at the student rate.

I've been to two NAEYC conferences and two IAEYC conferences. The state one is kinda "meh" but the national one is fabulous.

Some Useful and Fun Links

Because I am a complete dork, I've added some links over on the right column to a few of the blogs I follow. Joanne Jacobs is particularly interesting if you want one place to keep up on educational news. Some of the blogs are just for fun with a grain of truth to keep you grounded. Enjoy!

I think I got everyone...

I added a list of links to all our blogs over on the right.  If I've misspelled your name or missed you entirely, let me know.  Thanks!

Readings for 9/13

Sound Systems
I wanted more from the readings in this book. There was a lot of really good information covered, but background information was sometimes missing. I realize that the book might have been huge otherwise, but if this is your first book on these topics I can see how easy it would be to get lost.

Early on there are a few definitions (phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, etc.), but after that you're on your own for anything you don't know. Don't know what a rime is or think it's the same as a rhyme?  You'll have to do the legwork on that one. (Just for the record, rimes are parts of words that have stable and predictable pronunciations.)

Information on analyzing writing samples for spelling was very interesting to me. But when it came time to try my hand at it with a little exercise, I had trouble. It was clear that I really didn't understand what some of the categories of errors were.  I knew there were errors in the sample, I just couldn't categorize them all properly and I had to look outside the text for help. While it doesn't sound like that would be a terrible problem, I think it would be hard to plan instruction if you don't know what kinds of errors the kids are making.

I was better pleased with the discussion of language arts and content areas. I feel that it's incredibly important to mix language arts into the other parts of the school day. It's much easier for kids to make those mental connections with multiple exposures from different perspectives.

The information on accommodating individual differences was important information. I have other books that cover small group instruction more in-depth, but I'm happy it was mentioned here. It's great that you can work with small groups, but what to do with everyone else? This important question will likely lead people to more reading.

I could have used more information on record keeping. The forms in the back are nice, but how do you manage all that paper to make it meaningful? I intend to focus on how my cooperating teachers keep records on all their students throughout the days, weeks, and grading periods. I'm convinced that it's important to keep these records, but I'm not yet confident that I could keep them in a way that would effectively inform my teaching.

Every Mark on the Page
This article, while about writing, struck me as a more general reminder to teachers about how important it is to communicate with parents. Communication doesn't simply entail giving out school calendars and sending a note home when something is wrong. Explaining to parents what level of performance is expected not only eases parents' minds but can make the teacher's job easier. As a parent myself, I've had plenty of, "What is she thinking???" moments about my kids' teachers. More communication up front might have made me a better advocate for those teachers.

As a nursery school teacher I frequently had parents ask what their child would learn over the year. When I was working with two-year-olds this question was particularly vexing. Our program didn't test kids and the topics in the curriculum were guided by student interests and developmental needs. There's no way I could predict the whole year in August. I did know they'd learn lots of new words, get practice working in a social environment, and get exposure to plenty of math, science, and language arts content. Most parents, once presented with what was realistic and expected, were very reasonable. But without that information, they had nothing to judge what a successful year would look like. Setting expectations with parents can make for a year with a better attitude by everyone involved.

I'll be using some of the methods Cusumano mentions in her article for communicating with parents.  I got several new ideas from her list as well.

Double Spaces

Has anyone else noticed that double spacing after a punctuation mark in Blogger sometimes makes your formatting go off? You get weird spaces at the beginnings of lines within a paragraph occasionally. It adds a funky character after the space, if you check your HTML. I was always taught to type those two spaces and I'm finding it really hard not to do it! Does this thing have search and replace?

Community Literacy Dig

Introduction
For our community literacy dig our group chose to go to a park with a playground on a holiday weekend.  My assignment was to gather and record evidence of literacy.  Most of the reading required had to do with following instructions or finding specific parts of the playground, such as the bathroom.  The signs fell into several categories: information (for adults and children), decoration, for children to use in their play, and incidental signs that didn't seem to have much connection to how the park is used.  No writing is required in the playground other than what someone might scratch into the mulch.  I saw no one writing while at the park except for other group members.

Information for Adults

Sign at Park Entrance

Right away you can see information for adults as you walk in the park (the top of the sign is cut off so you don't know what park it was).  This sign is at both ends of the park so you're sure not to miss it.

Just in case an adult missed the first sign or didn't read what was prohibited, he or she could read either the words or the picture on this sign.  Several signs like this are posted in areas where adults are likely to light up without thinking.  One of those areas is directly under where the large play structure has a bridge, meaning any smoke would float up to the children playing there.

  

The three signs above tell adults which children are supposed to use the equipment, based on age (sorry for that third one, the cell phone isn't the greatest camera!).

Got a Dirty Diaper?

If you've got young kids, the koala to the right is a welcome sight.  Most parents (and many children) know that the koala means there's a place to change diapers handy.  This sticker was very high up on a bathroom door, indicating that it's for adults to read rather than children.

 

The above signs are for adults because they deal with driving and parking.  Both indicate places for special types of vehicles.

Also, see Matt's blog for a sign with instructions for a special swing.

Information for Children

Information for children (as well as the items for children's play) was often graphic in nature rather than words or letters.

Here we've got the sign by the bathroom.  Though this sign is readable by very young children because it uses pictures, it was placed fairly high up on the wall by the bathroom door.  One of these signs was by each of the two bathrooms.

Though technically a street sign and therefore most likely placed there for adults, children can read this sign, which indicates where the crosswalks are.  There were four of these signs next to two painted crosswalks at either end of the playground area so that pedestrians could cross to other parts of the park.

Decoration

This park is beautiful.  It's surrounded by trees.  Native rock is used in marking off the playground area.  There is also a gorgeous mosaic with a quote on it.  The full quote is: "We don't stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing. G.B.Shaw"

Children's Play

The signs and toys in the areas for younger children used pictures rather than words.  Here is a spinning toy that lets children create a sentence-like picture sequence:

For slightly older children there is a giant tic tac toe board.  While it's not important to be able to read the Xs and Os, it IS important to know that they are different and that they are markers in a game.

 

The above two photos show a musical instrument built into the play equipment.  By reading the letters, children can produce recognizable songs.  Below, note the numbers and the path of the ball toy, located high up in the play structure.  While the toy can still be used by children who can't yet read numbers, it adds an extra layer of challenge to follow the path and/or the numbers.

Incidental Signs

There were lots of signs that had nothing to do with the park.  Mostly they were labels on equipment denoting the manufacturer.  Utility poles had stickers on them.  My favorite sign that had nothing to do with the park was on a dog being trained to work with blind people.  That sign encouraged me to ask about him and chat with the trainers a bit, who had come to the park to practice socializing with him in a public place.

 

The fuzzy one above is the name of a manufacturer on the side of a bench.  It says: "Victor Stanley Inc. Dunkirk MD USA."  The yellow numbers and letters are from a utility pole.  The other two are manufacturer's tags (don't you just want to CALL that number in Sweden?).

But Wait, There's More!
These are images of the park.  To see more images and read more about the group's observations, you'll want to check out the work of my group-mates:

Matt and Courtney: Specialized Language
Arthur: Kinds of Language Used
Jen: The People at the Park
Diana: The Physical Environment

Introductory Post

Thoughts on the "That's Online Writing..." Article

What really stuck out for me in the article is the knee-jerk reaction of the administration to the child posting about his home location.  What a great learning opportunity that could have been!  Instead, the students didn't learn anything about a very important topic--online safety.  There are technological solutions that would have made the blogs private to the participants, meaning that the blogging could continue but a predator would not have been able to read them.

I was impressed that the teacher was willing to include an adult from outside the classroom, in this case a soldier.  Even though he was a parent of one of the students, not every teacher is willing to open up teaching processes to outsiders, who might not understand.  I do wonder if the teacher would have been willing to open the blogs up to all the parents of the participating children.

Me, the Occasional Blogger

I have had a blog for several years, mostly as a sort of journal for myself. Unfortunately, several people "followed" me (it didn't occur to me to make it a private blog) and now when I post I feel as though I have to write for an audience.  My blog was originally created as a way for me to keep a record of lesson plans, preschool activities, and resources I didn't want to lose.  It was a searchable resource for things I wanted to track to reuse in the classroom later.  Now that I've gone back to school I'm only updating my blog sporadically as I catch up on my backlog of activities.  Soon, I won't really have new material for the preschool set and I'll probably end that blog and start something new.  As the blog wasn't really about ME but rather about a topic I feel it makes more sense to abandon it.

Me, the Creative Writer

I hate to admit it, but I have always hated creative writing in school.  I don't feel that I'm very good at it and I feel a little lost in how to work with children on their creative writing.