Reading, Writing, & Gingerbread Houses

When my daughter Lori graduated from Covenant Day School three years ago, she challenged me by saying, "Mom, you've got a lot of time now. I think you should volunteer somewhere." I don't know about the "lots of time" -- but I did agree that I could be more involved on a volunteer basis in the community. Since my love is literacy, I approached Covenant Day High School and volunteered to coordinate a tutoring program. Together with volunteers from Christ Covenant Church, we are now in our third year. Last year we added a monthly trip to the school library as well as playing educational games when the students are done their work. Here is a slideshow including one of the library trips, tutoring, and our recent holiday party.



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Put these Events on your School Calendar

Reading through the September issue of Reading Today, I found two events that teachers, writers, and media specialists want to take note of this fall.

On October 8, 2009 more than one million children and adults are expected to team up with Eric Carle's famous "Hungry Caterpillar" to help break a world record for the world's largest shared-reading experience. Read this fun classic to a child and go to Read for the Record and see how you can help raise money for Jumpstart and at-risk children.


Twelve days later you and your students can celebrate the National Day on Writing on October 20th. This event celebrates writing as a part of everyday daily life. "All writers--including students, business owners, legislators, and others--are encouraged to submit a piece of writing to the National Gallery of Writing, a digital archive of writing samples that exhibit how and why Americans are writing every day. The archive will collect writing samples through 2009 and display them on the National Day on Writing via a free, searchable website."

I think this is a great opportunity for students, teachers, writers--everybody! to be part of a national celebration of the written language. Educators are particularly encouraged to submit a "resource piece" that will help non-educators better understand writing.

I can't wait to get the group of young students who I have helped tutor through Covenant Day School involved in this project. And of course, I'll have to submit something myself...the possibilities abound!

How about you? What piece of writing will you submit?
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Reading, Writing, & Gingerbread Houses

When my daughter Lori graduated from Covenant Day School three years ago, she challenged me by saying, "Mom, you've got a lot of time now. I think you should volunteer somewhere." I don't know about the "lots of time" -- but I did agree that I could be more involved on a volunteer basis in the community. Since my love is literacy, I approached Covenant Day High School and volunteered to coordinate a tutoring program. Together with volunteers from Christ Covenant Church, we are now in our third year. Last year we added a monthly trip to the school library as well as playing educational games when the students are done their work. Here is a video showing one of the library trips, tutoring, and our recent holiday party.




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Help for Haiti

“Cupboards were nearly bare before the winds started whipping, the skies opened, and this seaside city filled like a cauldron with thick, brown, smelly muck.”- Marc Lacey

Storms heighten Haiti’s suffering, Charlotte Observer, September 12, 2008.

I used that quote this fall to demonstrate to teachers how image-driven writing should include specific nouns ("cupboards, seaside city, cauldron"); image driven adjectives ("thick, brown, smelly muck"); and figurative language ("winds whipped") to grab a reader's attention.

I didn't know then that I would be able to participate in an opportunity to help the people of Haiti. As followers of this blog know, I generally blog about issues related to literacy. Today I'm taking a detour to let you know what I did yesterday instead of write.

Covenant Day School, a ministry of Christ Covenant Church, announced last week that they were working with the church to provide volunteers, medical goods, and clothing to help fill up a 53-foot trailer. The school specifically helps a school in Gonaives and some of the Crocs, medical supplies, and school supplies were going directly to orphans there.

When I arrived yesterday afternoon, this is what the trailer looked like on the inside:

I had the opportunity to not only interview Della and her father, but I also spoke with Susie Austin who has traveled to Haiti several times. She is returning in February to give hygiene training in three areas: hair care (so they don't get scabies), oral hygiene, and using Clorox to disinfect the children's bedding. Bed wetting is a big problem because there is no indoor plumbing and the children are afraid to go outside at night (tarantulas and the dark are two common enemies). Shoes are extremely important because without them, the children frequently get worms (intestinal parasites) and sand fleas.

A high point of the afternoon was the delivery of donated Crocs. Volunteers of all ages helped to unload the FedEx truck.

The shoes came in lots of colors and sizes, and the volunteers who had been to Haiti were excited about seeing the children's faces when they received them.


By the end of the afternoon, the trailer looked a lot different than when I had arrived.




Click here for more information about ministry to the Haitians or here for specific information about helping orphans worldwide.Technorati Tags:
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SOS for Writers

After a recent SCBWI critique meeting, I was musing with a 14-year-old first-time-attendee that writers need to consider three very distinct elements when they write. For the sake of simplicity and creating an easy to remember acronym for teachers and writers, let's think of this as:

• Story
  
• Overview & Critique
  
• Style
  

  
   

In other words, every writer, whether an elementary school child learning to write a story, a high school senior writing a critical essay on Spanish literature, or an adult crafting an article or novel; must consider WHAT he is writing (the "story" i.e., the content), the WAY in which he is writing it (i.e., style), and then finally, he must be able to sit back and critically evaluate HOW the piece is written (evaluating the mechanics, grammar, punctuation, etc.)

Right now I am listening to The Coldest Winter by David Halberstam. Not only is it an excellent compilation of the facts surrounding the Korean conflict (the "Story"), it is also written with great style and skill. Consider the following description of an early conflict against the North Koreans in July, 1950 that met with less than positive results:

"Operation Blue Hearts reflected a wildly optimistic view of how American troops would fare…It was planned as if the North Korean assault was nothing more than the arrival of a few mosquitoes that could easily be swatted away." With a simple metaphor, Halbersham communicated his distinct opinion of the operation.

Later, Halberstam described the arrival of a North Korean tank as it moved "steadily and majestically" toward a reporter. A majestic tank? Sounds like an oxymoron, but in his iconoclastic use of the adverb "majestically" Halberstam gave his reader a word picture of the Korean army.

Halberstam died in 2007 and can't tell of the hours he spent critiquing the words, paragraphs, and chapters which fill 20 books. His legacy speaks for itself.

As the SCBWI critique leader I have found that adult writers focus on one of these "SOS" elements at the expense of the other two. Student writers experience the same dilemma. I recently chatted about how freshmen lose their sense of writing "Style" when they enter high school. Robi Rego, the 9^th grade language arts teacher at
Covenant Day School commented that they don't see the connection between "creative" and "expository" writing. They enjoy writing short stories in middle school, but fail to use these skills when writing essays. I reminded her that good expository writing needs the same flair, style, and pizzazz that fiction writers imbed in their stories.

As a teacher or writer, how can you apply these principles?

• Make sure that the content is written in a cohesive fashion, makes sense, and grabs the reader's attention.
  
• Look at your word choice. Use "Muscle Words": vivid verbs, specific nouns, image-driven adjectives, similes, metaphors, personification and onomatopoeia, alliteration.
  
• Take the time to read your entire piece out loud. Look for grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors.
  
  

WRITING SOS - What every writer needs.

 

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Teaching Tutors

This year I initiated a tutoring program at the high school my children attended. Several student volunteers from Covenant Day High School as well as adults from Christ Covenant Church have been meeting weekly with 12 elementary school students to provide homework assistance. The children have required help with a variety of academic needs and flexibility has been an indispensable part of making the program work. Along the way I have learned the art of training individuals who cared enough to give up an afternoon a week, but weren't sure how to translate that concern into effective tutoring. With an emphasis on helping students learn how to solve problems themselves, here are some strategies which we improvised as needs surfaced:

• When a kindergarten student didn't bring in a book to read or homework to complete, I encouraged his tutor, a high school freshman, to help the student compose a simple story. With that idea, the kindergartner enjoyed dictating and helping to write several sentences.
  
• Creating math drawings supplemented flash cards and helped students to "get" multiplication tables.
  
• Tutors needed to learn how to stretch their students' writing. For example, an adult sat and watched a child write a simple paragraph about a book he had read without providing any input. Although the sentences were adequate, words were misspelled, sentence syntax needed improvement, and there was a repetitious overuse of pronouns. The adult needed to see these problems herself in order to provide correction and instruction.
  
• Tutors frequently needed to be reminded to let their students read (and to not read for them!). Similarly, tutors needed to make sure the students comprehended what they had read. Reluctant readers can be coaxed to read aloud by taking turns—the student one page, the tutor the next. Readers also took turns reading different characters' dialogue.
  
• When reviewing spelling words tutors needed to find out if the student knew the word's meaning.
  

  
  

  For more information on training tutors, see:
  

  http://www.nwrel.org/learns/trainingopps/training/index.html
  

  http://www.educ.uidaho.edu/bestpractices/training.html
  

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Cool Stuff

I'm busy preparing workshops for my trip to Pennsylvania next week, but just wanted to mention a few cool things from this week. One, Maupin House has set up their own blog now, and it is full of helpful information for educators. Second, check out this picture on the bottom right of the opening page of the National Middle School Association's conference information for next year. What a cool surprise for Jane Kiester and me! By the way, Jane and I are co-presenting at the SCIRA conference in two weeks where we're going to show several teachers how to "Jazz Up" their student's writing. Before we head down to Myrtle Beach for the conference, she's going to give a mini-workshop for the Carmel Christian and Covenant Day teachers in Matthews, NC.

Finally, Joyce Hostetter and I visited ImaginOn in Charlotte after getting an introduction to Second Life. At this point, I'm feeling slightly overwhelmed with my first life ---let alone manage a second one, but it looks like Keren Brandenburg (my avatar) is going to stretch my life experiences even more. For those of you, who may want to take a funny look at Second Life, check out this video.

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