Don't Let the Pigeon Write This Book

I love Mo Willems' writing. He has a number of picture books out that are just fabulous. Not only is he a creative illustrator, but his writing is imbued with his wonderful sense of humor (the dry kind, like mine!). One of his popular books is Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus.

Well, I just stumbled onto his blog tonight and found this inspiring post! It led me to imagine what the pigeon would find if he came to my school... Perhaps the principal's office, the swingset, the donuts in the staff lounge, the piano in the music room, the mailbox in front of the school...

So how's this for a writing activity?

Part One: Read a couple of the pigeon books by Mo Willems. Discuss what the pigeon wants in each book and how he goes about trying to get it. Talk about how Willems ends each story. Point out the talking bubbles or discuss quotation marks as a way to show that someone is talking. Take notes on chart paper for students to reference when they write their stories.

Part Two: Zerox and cut out a copy of the pigeon. Take photos of him sitting in various places in your school (this could be done by the teacher ahead of time or together as a class). Print the photos and distribute one to each student, or to each pair of students. Explain that this picture needs to be included somewhere in their story, either at the beginning, middle, or end. Model using one of the pictures as inspiration for a story: Think out loud as you construct an idea for a story: what does the pigeon want? Show students how you would begin your story (for younger kids, you might want to demonstrate writing the whole story). Then let the writing begin!

Of course, you will want to establish a teaching focus before beginning this lesson. Will you emphasize persuasive writing? Story form? Quotation marks? You also need to have a clear idea of what you want the final product to look like: individual stories? a class book? Think about how your students do their best writing: individually, in pairs, in table groups, or as a whole class? Perhaps you'll want to give out several photos rather than just one to each group.

If I were to do this in a first grade class (first half of the school year), I would take the whole class on a "field trip" around the school and have them give me suggestions on where to photograph the pigeon. We would then return to the classroom and go through the writing process together, crafting the story on sentence strips and putting them in a sequence that made sense. Then I would type up the story with the photographs and bind it as a class book to be enjoyed by everyone. The finished book would go home with each student, and once it had made it through each household, we would put it into our classroom library.

Since writing (and reading) can be so tedious for beginning first graders, this would give students an opportunity to contribute to the writing process and be creative without having to worry about the physical act of writing (we would of course be practicing this skill at other times). Also, once students have written a book together, they are immediately invested in learning how to read it!

Retells in Kindergarten

The use of conversation is so important in students' writing development. Younger students especially benefit from talking about stories and ideas before actually writing them down. And because the physical act of writing is particularly demanding for these students, focused discussions can be considering a form of pre-writing.

We do a lot of retells in first grade as a way to teach sequencing (beginning, middle, end), plot development, and other elements of stories. Recently I found this post describing work in a kindergarten classroom around a retell. The book they read is called The Wolf's Chicken Stew by Keiko Kasza. My favorite part about this lesson is the use of felt characters to orally retell the story. Students can do the oral retell as part of their "choices" during the literacy block. What a wonderful idea! If you click here, you can see a video of one retelling using the felt materials.

As you can see, the teachers took the students through multiple readings and oral retells of the text on to focused mini-lessons and eventually writing down their own retells. The writing samples given show remarkable work for a kindergartener!

Note: If you wish to re-create this series of lessons in your classroom, keep in mind that these kindergarten teachers used their students' interest in this story to prompt the writing and retelling activities. You may have a more appropriate picture book in your classroom that your students gravitate to that would be more suited to these activities!

Resources: Children's Books and Reading Programs

I was revisiting Esme Raji Codell's website today (author of Educating Esme, the spunky diary of a first-year teacher) and found some gems:

The Best New Children's Books
Esme reviews new children's books on her blog. She provides a wonderful range of fiction and nonfiction, picture books and chapter books, read-alouds and books for independent reading. In addition to the day's featured title, Esme includes books that you might enjoy that relate to it. For instance, in yesterday's post, she highlights Every Soul a Star by Wendy Mass, followed by several other "tweenage" books written by Mass and then a listing of realistic fiction appropriate for this age group.

Special Reading Programs (promoting the enjoyment of reading)
Here are several ideas for promoting reading in your school. Ranging from storytime breakfasts to weekly baking sessions to a book parade, they can be used as PTA-sponsored fundraisers, student body-sponsored activities, inspiration for an after-school class, or as the culminating activity for a school-wide literacy week.

Resources: Grammar, Punctuation, and Vocabulary

Books I want to check out:

The Elements of Style by E.B. White and William Strunk
Image Grammar by Harry Noden
Mechanically Inclined by Jeff Anderson
The Giggly Guide to Grammar by Cathy Campbell
Practical Punctuation: Lessons on Rule Making and Rule Breaking in Elementary Writing by Dan Feigelson

The last book, by Feigelson, was reviewed on a new blog I found recently called Two Writing Teachers. You can read their review here. Also on their site I found a great strategy for teaching vocabulary using Sensory Webbing. You can find that post here.

First Grade Journal Entries: Incorporating Skills and Creativity

Below are some excerpts from two of my first graders' journals written during our morning journal time, without any prompting. You will see that the students are experimenting with some of the skills they are learning in class: adding details, writing in sequential order, using a closing sentence, and incorporating voice.

12-9-05
On the 22nd I'm gonna go to Montana.

12-13-05
I'm excited to go to Montana! At Montana my grandma and my grandpa is living there!

12-15-05
On the 22nd I'm gonna go to Montana. My grandma and my grandpa live there. Last year my grandpa helped me build a birdhouse.

1-3-06
I'm happy when I go to Montana to see my grandma and my grandpa.

1-12-06
On the weekend I'm gonna finish my basketball hoop. My dad and I got two more things. The thing is putting the sand in and digging a place for my basketball hoop.

1-17-06
This weekend I had a basketball game. I didn't know the score.

1-19-06
Last night my dad put up a basketball [hoop]. My friends was outside. My friends is Josh and Kyle. My friend Josh played basketball.

3-6-06
This weekend I slept over at my grandma's. My grandma got a sports car. The roof goes off. I was the first kid to be in the sports car. Then I slept over at my friend's. He got a game cube. We played basketball. My friend won the first, then I won the second.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tomorrow I am going to get a new game for my PSP. It's going to be fun! You should try it. I like to play with my PSP. Why? Because it's really, really fun. Who does not like to play with a PSP? 2 people.

We are learning about Tell Me More. Tell Me More is about writing more, like this tip. Why do bears eat us? We do not taste good.

Hey everyone, how are you? Great. Fine. Give me your money or else. You have to give me your 1,000 or 100. Reese, can you buy me some money? Ok. Why don't you want my money? You want my money? Stop asking that question. You cannot do this to me. Oh great. Oh yes I can. Now do this: aaahhh.

Dominique Rhodes is number 33. He is the best on the Colts. He has a girly name. Who in the world will want a girly name like that?

The pacer test is today. I don't like it. Makes me sick. I might barf. I don't like to run and run.

It's the best day ever. I woke up and the sun smiled at me. I went outside and skipped to the crusty crab. Then he was gone.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Though their writing isn't refined, and sometimes doesn't make sense, it reveals what is important to them and, I'm happy to say, sounds like them. Voice is the hardest thing to teach, but when you help students get into the habit of writing every day (thus developing greater facility with words and with the physical act of writing), teach them the elements of good writing, model good writing, and then give them the opportunity to write about what they care about, their voice will be very apparent!

Journal writing is not the only way for students to have choice during writing, and it doesn't work all the time with every student. Its success really depends on what your purpose in journal writing is. My main purpose was for students to write every day, at the same time, for a specific amount of time. I wanted them to develop ease with writing, so that when they had to write for an assignment, it was not such a challenge for them. I wasn't as concerned about the content, although we did talk about what was appropriate (They couldn't write about video games for days on end; no violence; no unkind words about others.) and where they could get inspiration. Because the students had much control over the content, and since they could choose to start with a drawing or text, I rarely had trouble getting anyone to write.

The most exciting thing I saw in journal writing was the application of skills I was trying to teach. Often I would encourage students to share their writing aloud and then praise the way they were using a certain skill. (And inevitably, the next day someone else would use the skill and want to share!) It was a fun way to give the students choice within writing and accomplish my goals as well!

Should My Writing Program be Skills-Based or Student-Led?

Writing is an art. As such, it requires both a learned set of skills and opportunities for creative expression.

In teaching writing, then, can you successfully isolate these elements or do they need to be taught concurrently? Can you teach a set of skills without giving students an opportunity to express themselves? Can you encourage students to write creatively without equipping them with the necessary tools? Certainly we have tried to teach in one fashion or the other, but what is best?

I took piano lessons for a good part of my life and ended up majoring in piano performance in college. Practicing scales was part of my daily routine, as was practicing great literature. As I practiced, I found that my success with the literature was directly related to how diligently I practiced my scales. When the scales came easily, I no longer had to think specifically about which finger to put on which note, and was freed up to play expressively. Later, when I was required to improvise in a jazz setting, I was able to draw on my knowledge of scales to create a new musical experience. In this case, the skills (scale fingering) were taught in isolation, but in view of finding application in a larger work (great literature).

A few summers ago I took an art class for teachers, the first art class ever in which I was pleased with my art. The method of teaching was direct instruction (draw this, step-by-step) but we had the opportunity to make choices within the structure. Interestingly, every drawing was unique, even though we were taught the same method. In this case, skills and creative expression were taught and encouraged simultaneously.

Skills Practice
In my first-grade classroom, we did daily journal writing as part of our skills practice. I wanted my students to get used to the discipline of daily writing, whether they had something interesting to say or not. Every morning they would come in, pull out their journals, and write. Those who didn't know what to write about could check our brainstorming lists, look at a book for ideas, or start by drawing a picture. I also had my students copy sentences so they could get used to the look and feel of a sentence (capital at the beginning, noun, verb, period at the end). We studied parts of speech in isolation and then applied them in our writing. Our writing assignments frequently mimicked the writing of other authors as we retold stories read in class (fairytales or stories from the basal reader), copied the structure of a mentor text (Go To Bed, Biscuit! by Alyssa Capucilli or The Important Book by Margaret Wise Brown), or played off the theme of a book (our worries, from Wemberly Worried by Kevin Henkes).

Creative Expression
I would also give students choice within assignments. When they learned how to write a thank-you letter, they got to choose their audience (someone in the school - several wrote to the principal!). When they learned about persuasive writing, from I Wanna Iguana by Karen Orloff, they wrote letters to their parents asking for pets they really wanted. When they learned about different forms of poetry, I gave the students free rein in choosing their topics. They could also choose which form to use. In their daily journals, students had complete control over both topic and genre and would often apply skills they had learned in formal writing lessons to their writing.

My suspicion is that sometimes you need to teach skills in isolation. Not everything can be taught successfully using a mini-lesson. However, a skills lesson should always be followed by the opportunity to apply the skills, be it that day or later in the year. Likewise, giving students choices in their writing should be part of your writing program - but not the whole of it. They will be better and more confident writers if they are taught the skills they need to be successful and given the opportunity to express themselves in writing.

Curriculum Mapping in Writing - Another Resource

Meridian School District has provided monthly and yearly curriculum maps by grade level as well as links to the Washington State EALRs here. These give a nice overview of the types of writing that happen at each grade level.