Minutes (Amy)

As I entered the room this morning, armed with a 16.9 ounce Red Bull energy drink, I was greeted by two lime colored packages of sour skittles – a gift from Vicki – as prepayment for technical assistance that will be rendered during her upcoming inquiry workshop.

 

Teacher consultants carried on conversations in small groups.  One of the more notable conversations included a discussion of Holly’s childhood refusal to taste pies, much to the surprise of Michael, her neighbor.  These conversations lead into the unceremonious dropping of Holly’s (thankfully indestructible) laptop.

 

This early morning group also tackled some pretty heavy subjects such as:

• The unfairness of the Auburn City Schools secondary teachers reaping the benefits of the laptop initiative while the elementary teachers struggled to understand why they were left out.
• Susan and John had a circular discussion about who would send out an e-mail about the postponed leadership team meeting.
• Jennifer and Vicki have been perplexed the last few days over their missing water bottles.  Their solution was to actually put their names on their bottles. This seems to have remedied the problem.
• In Whitney’s absence John complained about her messy work space and we all pondered the best position for John to take the best photograph of her area.  After embellishing the space a bit with more crumbs and wrappers, John crawled under the circle of tables once again to take the picture.
• Unresolved issue: “Tsunami”, a.k.a. Auburn’s wireless network, has created a big wave of discontent the past few days in room 2474.  Many people commented on their frustration with getting online.

 

After everyone trickled in, announcements were made, mainly pertaining to Friday’s “Slice of Sunbelt” being held from 9-11 at the Alumni Center. Whitney use this time to introduce the vocabulary word of the day, “wonky”, which she used to describe what happens to the graphics on a document when you send them over e-mail.  We were reminded to send her our graphic representations of our Sun Belt experience to her by tomorrow afternoon.

For morning inspiration, I shared The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, a picture book by Chris Van Allsburg, author of other popular books such asJumanji, Zathura, and The Polar Express.  The pictures in this book inspire children all over the world to write mysterious stories.  (The portfolio edition is a bit unique and can be purchased on Amazon for about $16.00.)

I also read some excerpts from 26 Fairmount Avenue, a children’s chapter book by Tomie DePaola, where he recollects events from his childhood.   I chose to read this after being reminded of….

·        Holly’s wonderful stories about her “Nana”

·        Ivy’s potentially tragic childhood episode with a roof and an umbrella

·        Whitney, disgruntled with the popularity of animated Disney fairy tales

·        Lori and her husband bravely building their own home

·        Yvonne’s story about her relatives escaping a hurricane

·        John’s recurring “Catholic guilt”

 

Our honored guest, Mr. McDade, graciously passed out gifts from D.C. Wolfe Elementary School and we all began our sacred morning writing time.

After diligently working, most of us feverishly attempting to finish the required four writings for Sun Source, conversations began.  Somehow, the topic turned to dieting and the shocking procedure called “colon cleansing”.  Vicki commented that “it’s all about the fiber”.  I fear I missed some important dialogue when I left the room for a bit of a break.  (You’re probably thankful I couldn’t expound.)

 

Maribeth presented her TIW, titled “Speech…Poetry…Music”. Just listing the title doesn’t do it justice.  Her font and placements of the words conveyed additional meaning – that poetry is on a kind of continuum between speech and music. She coined a new phrase admired by many “make your writing sound more delicious” when she listed her essential questions: How do writers use sound to make their writing more delicious? How can you use sound to make your writing more delicious?  We all listened intently to Maribeth as she shared a few poems and we collaboratively listed elements of sound that we noticed in each.  Jennifer acted as our community’s hole punch operator, and Whitney took the role of an intentionally difficult student.

 Maribeth had us share words we loved to say, words that “feel good in our mouth”.  Some words shared were: vernacular, onomatopoeia, genre, reliquary, lubricant, subterfuge, britches, awkward, cantankerous, and exacerbate.  Our personal three-word list soon became a whole class activity. We passed our papers to the left, while the recipients listed one word that sounded (or had some of the same sounds) as the initial words on our list. This process continued around the room until we all recovered our original papers.  There were some questionable transitions along the line of words on my paper.  I’m still wondering how my three words (“onomatopoeia”, “aquamarine”, and “quadrilateral”) transitioned into the words, “horny”, “prostitute”, and “penis”.  (I suspect Michael had something to do with this.)

Maribeth had us take our final lists and use these words to create a poem. (You can imagine with the word selection I had, that it was rather difficult). We met in groups to revise and then displayed our poems and word lists in the room.  Maribeth surprised us with gifts of brightly colored containers and Popsicle sticks. What for?  We were to write some of the “wondrous words” we had on our lists on the sticks, place them in a container, and pull one out in our classrooms to inspire our children to used varied vocabulary in their writing. (I, of course, had to “edit” my list a bit. I don’t think third graders, or their parents, would appreciate some of this “broader” vocabulary.) Everyone was so involved in this project, that the beginning of lunch time was ignored.  No one seemed to mind.

 

After a slightly shorter lunch, Ivy began her TIW entitled, “Obstacles In Our Way, The True Story of Our Lives & ‘Helen Keller’.”  Ivy is a veteran teacher who taught kindergarten for an amazing 25 years.  She is currently the reading coach at D.C. Wolfe.

 Ivy’s Essential Questions:

1.  How do I use writing to get into the heads of the characters read about?

2.  What does student writing look like for these students?

 

Ivy had us list things that we were afraid of, things that make us angry, and other “obstacles”.

·        Robbie was angered that some solar lights were stolen from her house last night.

·        Maribeth displayed her strip of paper inscribed with only 4 letters: NCLB.

·        Jevette was distraught at the fact that she might not have any summer vacation left.

Ivy had us complete an activity where we identify “tier two” words – words that are not a typical part of a child’s conversational vocabulary. She read us a book about the life of Helen Keller, and we identified some of those “tier two” words when we heard them in the story.

 Ivy’s thoughts about dealing with obstacles:

·        Think positive

·        Keep a clear mind

·        Persist-persevere

·        Think about and picture in mind all possible solutions

·        Get assistance – ask for help

 Jevette, Yvonne, and Lori entertained us with a skit about a clown crossing an obstacle in the road as a conclusion to Ivy’s lesson.

 

Then, it was off to writing response groups – one of the favorite summer Sun Belt activities. I can’t speak for the other three response groups, but our group had the pleasure of having Whitney today, who was, for some reason, relating all the images in Maribeth’s poems to sex and private parts.  We did, however, actually give out some constructive comments that were genuine and helpful. Thanks, Whitney, for all the laughs.

 

Our closing consisted of a sincere confession by Whitney, who stated to Vicki that she will be especially nice tomorrow, trying to make up for her displeasing attitude today. Lorie pleasantly ended our day with some comical anecdotes from one of her favorite writers, Jan Karon.

 

Thanks, Sun Belters, for a great day!  Can’t wait for our writing marathon tomorrow J

Amy