Marymcb’s Weblog

I’ve been thinking a lot about different options for the multi genre project. Ellis Island is one of the possibilities at this point in time. My grandfather came through Ellis Island from Norway. I can get information from the Ellis Island website. I’m still not 100% sure about it. The more I read in Writing Without Boundaries, the more manageable it seems to be. I like the idea of goal sheets. That way, I can break the effort into more manageable pieces. Another possibility is Cape Hatteras. I’m going there for the week of spring break and I think it would be an interesting topic. There are always the wild ponies on Ocracoke. Another topic could be coastal erosion. I plan on picking a final topic by next Monday.

I had a conference today about a 2nd grade students. He is very bright, but may be somewhat bored. We decided that the AIG teacher can work with him and some of the the other high performing kids on multi genre projects. She, the classroom teacher and I will work on the specifics. Hopefully, we may be able to do this through our enrichment times. We have 2 enrichment times during the week. Students are divided into small groups to work at instructional levels in some type of fun but challenging activity.

Multigenre projects are engaging! That’s what the video ended with on Dr. Frye’s website. Students need to be engaged. When there are different possibilities to show learned information and not only learned, but assimilated, analyzed, synthesized and evaluated, students will be more confident in presenting their ideas in ways with which they are comfortable. I am excited about this project because I know it will challenge me and in through that challenge, I will be learning so much and have the opportunity to express so much more than a traditional project would allow.

The more I see excellent and effective teaching and the more classes I take, the more I wish I could go back and redo some of my own teaching efforts. I was not a bad teacher, but I know I could have been so much better!!!

revised-mississippi.doc

  mississippi.doc

Persona poems are perspective possession poems. The poet possesses the object and senses through that object. The possession (sounds a little creepy at first) is complete and internal. The object is not separate, but rather part of. Hopefully this will come across when I do my first persona poem.

I have attached my first attempt. It came out okay. It seemed to take a long time. I enjoyed the experience. One of the things I had to do was to refer back to the text to get the correct vocabulary and to make sure that I sufficiently covered the content. This act of going back and forth is sure to help students to internalize information. Again the perspective will help them appreciate what they are learning and be able to fit it into their world views.

We so need to know how to do poetry and what it looks like. I was an English major and while I love the poetry I read, it would be impossible for me to attempt to write anything like it. These persona poems are wonderful in two ways. The first is that they force us into a new perspective. We have to wrap our minds through something or somebody else. That immediately moves us up on Bloom’s Taxonomy to assimilation. Can evaluation be far behind? The other thing that persona poems do is provide a secure entry into the world of poetry. If I have the facts and I start my verse with I, how far off the mark can I get? It may not end up being great poetry, but it is the initial plunge. Once I am in, it’s a short moment to being acclimated. Once I’m comfortable, I can swim off in my own directions!!

Haiku

me-concrete.doc

acrostic.docacrostic.docacrostic.doc

invite.doc

Thanks Jennifer! I will attach poems and invitations when I get to my computers.

Check off one stressor.