Minutes (Holly)

Today was a fun day for the members of the 2008 Sun Belt Writing Project Summer Institute. We had the privilege of seeing two great TIW’s along with enjoying some nice personal writing time during the allotted Morning Writing. 

We began with sharing inspirations that other TC’s brought to share today. Yvonne brought a picture of her family in front of her new house and a photo of her husband with two of her grandchildren at an Auburn football tailgate. Ivy brought a picture of her daughter and two grandchildren. Vicki brought a kaleidoscope, with which she hopes to see forty Tom Sellecks someday. Holly brought a letter and photos from her Nana. Hopefully we will find great inspiration in these personal items at some point in the summer if we haven’t already done so. Who knows? Maybe Vicki will surprise us with a piece about a Tom Selleck encounter? J

After John and Whitney went over the agenda for the day, Whitney presented a Morning Writing activity. Whitney read a moving passage from Donald Murray’s Crafting a Life in Essay, Story, Poem (1996) from a chapter titled “Developing a Writer’s Attitude”. This passage encouraged us as writers to write about what makes us different. Murray advises that writers need to show a little vulnerability and use a personal voice in our writing. We were advised to write as if sitting at our kitchen table talking to a dear friend. Murray’s theory is that the more personal we are, the more individual we become. He also provides some insightful quotes from Picasso about connecting with painting and knowing what is right to do when creating art. Writing should be instinctive, Murray illustrates. Murray also recommends not planning too much or forcing a draft. Whitney ended with reading a poignant quote from Murray’s book: “Talent is common, energy rare.” Our invitation to write from Whitney is below:

Invitation to write: Write about your differences, and respect your drafts. Remember that talent is common, and energy is rare. Acceptance is as rational as rejection.

We spent the next forty-five minutes (9:00-9:45 a.m.) doing individual writing based on the invitation to write. (Michael provided some sweet tunes).

 

From 10:00-11:30 a.m., we had the privilege of participating in Jennifer Spencer’s TIW. Jennifer composed her TIW based on a lesson she does at the end of her school year for her fifth grade students on the human body and its systems. She titled her lesson Human Body Project.

Jennifer’s essential questions included the following:

1.     How can technology be used to motivate students?

2.     How does technology increase student’s ability to learn science curriculum?

3.     How do we use technology so that it is a meaningful part of the learning process.

Jennifer said she usually begins with a jigsaw activity, in which students become experts on assigned systems of the human body. Jennifer discussed several areas of her jigsaw activity that she found lacking, specifically that students didn’t know how to teach each other once they left their expert groups. Therefore, Jennifer began adapting the lesson to let students teach the whole class a concept through group collaboration and technology.

 

Jennifer has used a variety of technology in her projects. We viewed several sample student projects, including a PowerPoint, Pod cast, music video, Photo Story, and home video. The other TC’s noted that Jennifer does an exceptional job of creating technology-infused lessons that are also rich in content and structure. (The lessons are really fun, too)!

After showing us some student samples of the Human Body Project, Jennifer assigned us a scaled-down version of her lesson. We broke into groups of 4-5, and we looked through picture books in order to choose the body system we would like to study and present with some form of technology.

We had approximately twenty-thirty minutes to work on our presentation, and (we must admit) we were very creative in the time given. One group used a You Tube video to illustrate how the heart beats, and they created a song and dance to relay why the heart beats and why we should exercise to keep it healthy. Another group created a Photo Story presentation to teach about the brain and its functions. The final group created a Podcast recording a fictional story explaining how the digestive system works. All projects were both fun and content-rich! It was easy for us to see why this is such a “magical lesson” in Jennifer’s fifth grade classroom every year.

During the reflection portion of Jennifer’s TIW, she presented two questions she still has about her lesson and how to improve it. Jennifer’s reflection questions are listed below:

1. After my TIW, are there areas of my lesson that could be more efficient?
2. How might I teach technology resources progressively throughout the year so that this could be a culminating unit at the end of the fifth grade science?

The class offered immediate verbal feedback, and Jennifer said several ideas were very helpful. The class’s feedback includes the following:

1. Perhaps you could teach some technology concepts throughout the year (Podcast one week, PowerPoint one week, Photo Story one week, etc.)
2. Make a Podcast that gives instructions for how to use each piece of technology that students may be using in class for projects.
3. Keep a file of instructions in the room (technology file).
4. Relate this project to the scientific method.
5. Incorporate a reflection for students to do to process the scientific method they used to do their project.
6. Create an authentic audience for the class. Let them present at a PTA meeting or for another class.

We thoroughly enjoyed participating in Jennifer’s lesson!

When we returned from lunch, we were happy to participate in Dr. Alyson Whyte’s TIW. Dr. Whyte teaches an undergraduate class at Auburn University, and she really wanted help in creating an effective lesson that helps students evaluate their own writing and their writing process. In order to better understand what Dr. Whyte has students do to attempt evaluating their own writing, we participated in a lesson in which Dr. Whyte has students complete an audit of their writing for her class. Dr. Whyte made an adaptation for us, and we did an audit of our writing in Sun Belt.

Dr. Whyte had several questions in the reflection portion of her TIW that addressed her essential question, including the following:

1.     What are you aware of that may help me further my understanding of the concept of the writers’ range?

2.     What published resources are there that you respect and are aware of that might help me ground my concept of high-quality writing so that I don’t narrow the concept more than it exists in the wider society yet can give the students scaffolding toward their definition of high-quality writing?

3.     What are efficient ways you can think of or know (e.g. teacher research tools) that I can employ to keep track of my initial responsive introduction on the concepts of growth, range, and high quality writing; students’ uptake of these concepts in their audits, and students’ construction of understanding of these concepts?

4.     How manageable (streamlined) is this plan for formative feedback every one or two weeks? (Which: every week or every two weeks?) How could I streamline it further?

5.     How do you predict these students will respond to this design? What experiences that you have had led you to predict what you did?

We ended Alyson’s TIW with a letter of reflection. We wrote a letter to Alyson in which we created responses to her reflection questions. Hopefully, Alyson will find some useful advice in these letters.

We ended today with a closing activity in which Whitney had us create Sun and Shadow Mandalas. Whitney explained that Mandalas are related to several cultures (Tibetan, for example), and that these cultures have found that Mandalas are natural precursors to writing (both in children and in developing peoples).

We created Mandela’s based on following seven questions:

                                             1.     What animal are you?

                                             2.     What plant are you? 

                                             3.     What color are you?

                                             4.     What number are you?

                                             5.     What shape are you?

                                             6.     What gem/mineral are you?

                                             7.     What element are you (air, earth, fire, water)?

We learned a lot about ourselves through the creation of these beautiful works of art!