Uncovering Objectives

Today, as the first step in the Writing for Change unit, I gave my sixth grade students the opportunity to gripe. Oh my goodness, such a positive reaction to any assignment I have not seen in a long time. "Really?" one student asked, "You want us to write a list of complaints?"

"Oh, yes," I told them, "I do."

"Can we use names?" someone wondered.

"Better not," I said. "Describe the behavior that irks you, not the person."

"Can it be anything?" another asked.

"Yes. Anything that bothers you, large or small."

They worked diligently for 15 minutes or so, and then it was time to share their concerns, but first we talked about how to respond. "Don't offer solutions," I advised. "Don't minimize the problem by saying it doesn't bother you, and don't make the conversation about you by saying it does. If you have to say anything, just say you can see how that would be frustrating, or embarrassing, or whatever."

That was hard for them, and it was hard for me, too. Hard to let it go when someone complained about boys who skip, girls who are ugly but try to dress cool, people who wear the wrong color shoes. Those were probably the most shallow, but most of the concerns they chose to share were minor irritations at best: People who give away the ending to the book you're reading, people who snap gum, too much homework on the weekends, cold pizza at lunch, teachers who say, "I'm waiting," getting in trouble the one time you haven't done anything, having your grandmother tell her life story to the cashier at the grocery store, dancing in PE, and so forth.

I liked how concrete they were, though, and I told them so. "But if you look at your list for more serious problems, what do you have?"

Of course they had plenty of big issues, too: Natural disasters, animal cruelty, hunger, homelessness, poverty, government spending, lack of respect for religion, random violence, smoking, diseases, etc. They were still listing as the bell rang.

I over heard two girls talking as they left the room. "That was great!" said one. "We actually got to complain in school!"

"I know," her friend answered, "but why do you think we did that? Wait! Do you think we are going to use writing to actually do something?"

(Click here for today's sample of my 6th grade students' response to the SOLSC challenge.)

Lightbulb

Every year I do a Writing for Change unit with my students that requires both research and persuasive composition. I have tried all sorts of ways to get them to identify an issue of concern of theirs, be it personal, family, peer, academic, social, local, national, or even global, do some research on it, and then address it in writing-- usually in a genre of their choice. I know that sounds a little unstructured, mosty because it is, but hear me out.

One of my objectives is for them to think about what is important to them; another goal is that they discover that they can actually use writing to address such a concern, and still another is for them to understand that there are many ways to do so. Ultimately, my hope is that they will be empowered by that knowledge to become citizens who think and communicate on issues that concern them.

We focus on both theme and message as we read a variety of common texts together and they look at those in their independent reading, too. At the same time, they list, free write, compose questions, and do research on their way to a final product, which might be a speech, a public service announcement, a brochure, a letter, an essay, a protest song, or something else. The intention is to make it as authentic as possible, too, so they identify an audience, too, and we try to get that message out.

It's a messy process. There are so many balls in the air that I've never been quite satisfied with the end result, although I think the process is valuable. Tonight, as I was researching a few issues myself in an attempt to find some current and topical common texts, I noticed a trend. Many websites devoted to specific issues have one or both of the following lists: FAQs and Ten Things YOU Can Do.

It occurred to me that creating either of those things would be a persuasive experience requiring research. Furthermore, they are very concrete and very structured, both of which qualities are under-represented in my unit as it is currently conceived. They may just be the exact products that could pull it all together for those of my students who are still developing their abstract thinking skills.

I can't wait to find out.

(Click here for today's sample of my 6th grade students' response to the 2011 SOLSC challenge.)

Showing a Visitor Around Town

A week ago the door bell rang and I opened it to a delivery person with an unexpected package. Hand addressed to me personally and postmarked the Netherlands with a return address I did not recognize, I paused to consider the eight inch cube. I racked my brains for forgotten internet purchases, but nothing presented itself.

I took a deep breath and grabbed a pair of scissors, surprised by my hesitation, but in this day and age, caution is prudent. Inside, swathed in bubble wrap and a zip lock was a beanie baby named Goldie. She was part of a social studies project from a second grade class in Phoenix, Arizona. On more careful examination, I saw that she had been sent on her way by my sister's 7-year-old niece. "Oops! I forgot to tell you," my sister said, "but we thought since you're a teacher..."

Today we took Goldie out on the town with our 15-year-old nephews, Josh and Treat. They were not quite as careful as I would have liked-- Goldie flew through the air and even hit the dusty crushed gravel of the National Mall more than once, and a guard did have to scold her in the sculpture garden for touching the art work-- but determined to show her a few out-of-the-way sights, we found some things we probably would have passed by without a second look.

A good example was the rustic wooden bench hewn from a sugar maple from the campus of Cornell University. It stood in a tiny sustainability garden on the mall side of the USDA. Both vegetable patch and bench were part of The People's Garden project, something I had never heard of, but which turns out to be a very cool initiative.

Thanks Goldie!

(Click here for today's sample of my 6th grade students' response to the 2011 SOLSC challenge.)

Super Moon

When we heard that the full moon tonight would be closer, bigger, and brighter than it had at any time since 1993, viewing its rise at 7:39 went to the top of our to-do list. Even before we had seen it, my nephew, Treat, proposed a Super Moon Reunion party for the next time it occurred. We were on our way home from a pretty mediocre movie, Limitless, at the time, but the previews had featured remakes of both Arthur and Conan the Barbarian. So as we planned our reunion party, we kept our fingers crossed that Limitless 20?? would be in theaters at the time.

(Click here for today's sample of my 6th grade students' response to the 2011 SOLSC challenge.)

Day 120

With temps pushing 80, it seemed like a lucky break this afternoon that we had arranged to leave work early to go pick up our godson, Josh, for a quick visit. There was a lot of traffic on the way up to and back from Baltimore, but somehow, with the sun shining and the whole weekend stretching ahead of us, it didn't matter too much. Back at home, we checked the movie listings, fired up the grill, and decided which game we might play after dinner, and just like that, summer did not seem so far away after all.

(Click here for today's sample of my 6th grade students' response to the 2011 SOLSC challenge.)

Lowest Common Denominator

Taking advantage of the tournament brackets that are so prevalent at this time of year, I organized a Super Sentence tourny in my classes today. All week we have analyzed our common text (Famous by Naomi Shihab Nye) sentence by sentence, looked to our independent reading for models, pulled plums from our own writing, and composed sentences that we thought would captivate and delight an audience.

After ten minutes of tweaking, the brackets were posted and students read their gems head to head. I gave grammar advice in context, but word choice and content was all theirs, and the judges were their peers. For each pairing, the winner got a lollipop and the right to move on, and the loser got to sit down.

There were some beautiful sentences, and I'd like to say that those writers won every time, and sometimes they did, but a crucial concept here was audience. In two of my five classes, kids who are not generally known for their writing rocked the brackets, and it was awesome to see them experience that unexpected success. Both of those boys were composing as they went along, scribbling furiously between rounds so that they would have something to read when it was their turn. One of them crafted exquisite and complex sentences of suspense; I confess that my jaw literally dropped at the end of one. The other took a more vulgar approach, although it was no less successful. His sentences involved a hair ball, someone urinating his pants, and an ugly sister.

In the end, these guys met the same fate. The clock was their enemy. When it came to the final round, they each had to forfeit because they hadn't prepared well enough in advance, and they didn't have anything to read, which was really a pity.


(Click here for today's sample of my 6th grade students' response to the 2011 SOLSC challenge.)

Too Close to Home

A couple of weeks ago, as we exited from the Oscar-nominated documentary shorts, I was telling my nephew how one of them, Sun Come Up,  reminded me of the second book in Jeanne DuPrau's City of Ember series, The People of Sparks. We had just seen five mini-movies about terrorism, industrial pollution, global warming, the aftermath of war, and educating refugees. In this particular movie, residents of a low-lying atoll which is gradually being flooded must go to a larger, neighboring island and literally beg for a place to relocate. Resources are limited on the larger island, and they are still recovering from a civil war. Most people there are not willing to help the islanders who are losing their home.

Likewise, the people in the fictional post-apocalyptic village of Sparks must decide if they can support the 300 refugees from Ember through the winter. The people of Ember will not survive without their assistance, but the resources are scarce.

"What happened to the world?" my nephew asked.

I told him it wasn't clear from the book. "Who knows? Maybe it was terrorism, global warming, pollution, or war," I shrugged. We laughed, but it was a bit of a sober moment.

(Click here for today's sample of my 6th grade students' response to the 2011 SOLSC challenge.)