Poem in Your Pocket Day

Yesterday was Poem in Your Pocket Day. Started ten years ago in the mayor’s office of New York City, this fun event has people talking about, reading, and listening to poetry for a wonderful day in April.

I read about it on Twitter on the very morning it had already started, so I didn’t have much time to prepare. I saw that there was a hashtag, #pocketpoem, to follow and share the poem you had in your pocket.

On my way to bus duty I grabbed photocopies of some short kid-friendly poems. The K-3 students gladly found a poem they liked while they waited for their bus. They put them right into their pockets and took them out to read to each other.

Later, with my 7th and 8th graders, I had them find a poem they loved and put it in their pocket too. Some chose ones they had written themselves, and others found theirs in a book and wrote them out by hand or got a photocopy. They read them several times to classmates. It was such a beautiful spring day, so one class went outside and formed two concentric circles. Facing each other, they read to the person across from them, and then rotated after each reading and listening.

The poem in my pocket was written over twenty years ago by Roald Dahl in a letter to my second grade students.

Poem in Your Pocket Day was a fun poetry activity, and I will definitely try to notice earlier next year so I can do more with it.

Agents of Change vs. Status Quo

Here’s my report back after a few days of history class where students OWNED this standard:

Understand the role of individuals and groups within a society as promoters of change or the status quo.

  • Understand that specific individuals and the values those individuals held had an impact on history.
  • Understand significant events and people, including women and minorities, in the major eras of history.

They came up with presentations, movies, and blog posts to show how they understood this Iowa Core standard. You can find links to their projects here.

However, when I read this quote from Becca’s blog post, it made me realize this unit was a success:

When we had to present, I saw all the other topics and I saw how hard the people [in history] tried to change the status quo. It makes me want to change things that are important. When you look at how hard they tried to make a change in history, and they didn’t do it just for them–it was for other people who wanted what they wanted.

Related posts:

First Post SBAR and Making the Perfect Cremé Brulee

Second Post Day 2 – Promoters of Change or the Status Quo

Ah, Friday! Australia Treats

I’ll never forget about six weeks ago when three girls came running up to me, telling me about their next genius hour adventure. “We are going to send chocolates to people around the world, so they can taste our chocolate. Then we are going to ask them to send us some chocolate from their country. We can compare the tastes and packages.” So, they were off!

Thanks to some of the students’ friends and relatives, plus members of my awesome PLN, the students have received packages from South Korea, United Arab Emirates, Argentina, France, and, the latest, from Australia.

I met Lyn Howlin last year when we completed the teacher’s blogging challenge together. Later my seventh graders hosted her third graders’ Flat Stanleys. Now we’ve been Flickr photo friends and email penpals. She’s now retired, but she’s still a teacher. Look at the beautiful letter she wrote, engaging my students in learning about the world.

Thank you, Lyn!

(Students are still working on their comparison and taste test.)

This post is also published on The Global Classroom Project blog, “A Letter From Oz.”

Day 2 – Promoters of Change or the Status Quo

Yesterday we started a history unit where I “put the standard out there for the kids to OWN,” as Michelle commented on yesterday’s blog post. Here is the standard:

Understand the role of individuals and groups within a society as promoters of change or the status quo.

  • Understand that specific individuals and the values those individuals held had an impact on history.
  • Understand significant events and people, including women and minorities, in the major eras of history.

I was impressed with the work the students have done since yesterday. Some of the students are doing more predictable subjects in history–those who have promoted change and those who have promoted the status quo:

  1. Rosa Parks
  2. Ku Klux Klan
  3. Martin Luther King, Jr.
  4. The North and South in the Civil War

Some students have found lesser-known people in history who have done great things:

  1. Augusta M. Hunt – Relative of Helen Hunt who was a leader in women’s rights in early 20th century Maine
  2. Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. – 1932 West Point grad and Tuskegee Airman
  3. Lucy Terry Prince – Former slave, amateur lawyer and poet
  4. Kenneth James Weishuhn – a 14-year-old aggressively bullied to death by promoters of the status quo
  5. Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie – three black circus workers who were lynched in the northern city of Duluth, Minnesota
  6. Pearl Harbor and the United States’ neutrality in early WW II. They are asking an interesting question. Is there really such a thing as neutrality or was the U.S. promoting the status quo by trying to stay out of the war?

The last two days we have had rigorous and relevant historical conversations.

Update – Here’s my report after we finished.

Subscription image from iClipart for schools

 

SBAR and Making the Perfect Cremé Brulee

Today I experimented. I do this often, but today was a success.

I am enthralled with learning about Standards Based Assessment and Reporting (SBAR). Recently, I was inspired by a tweet from a former colleague who visited Shawn Cornally in his SBAR higher-level math and science courses. I love Shawn’s blog Think, Thank, Thunk and I’ve been reading of his challenges and successes with SBAR. Today I gave my history students a copy of just five pages of the social studies Iowa Core standards for grades 6-8.

First, I apologized because we only have 4.5 weeks left of school, and I have not taught them all these things.

Second, we began to look through them, and when we hit one that we all slightly understood, I said, “OK, that’s the one. We’ll stop right on this one.” Here it is:

Understand the role of individuals and groups within a society as promoters of change or the status quo.

  • Understand that specific individuals and the values those individuals held had an impact on history.
  • Understand significant events and people, including women and minorities, in the major eras of history.

We talked about it for a while. The Civil Rights Movement came up. Connections were made. The Ku Klux Klan and Martin Luther King, Jr., were mentioned. Students were discussing. I didn’t have an assignment or worksheets. Status quo was a needed vocab word for many of the students, and Jaci saved the day by breaking into song, “Stick to the Status Quo”:

No, no, no, nooooooooooo
No, no, no
Stick to the stuff you know
If you wanna be cool
Follow one simple rule
Don’t mess with the flow, no no
Stick to the status quoooooooo

She explained how students in High School Musical wanted to bake, make the perfect cremé brulee, do hip hop and more, but they kept being put down and told:

No, no, no
stick to the stuff you know
It is better by far
To keep things as they are
Don’t mess with the flow, no no
Stick to the status quo

OK, this is a fun way to talk about vocabulary during history class, I thought.

That was yesterday. For today’s class, I sent this “assignment” in an email:

Work hard today! We have much to learn and do! Much to create and experience! You are a genius and the world demands your contribution! For instance, check out how many people have been enjoying your book spine poems:

Today, we are doing this…

Essential Concept and/or Skill: Understand the role of individuals and groups within a society as promoters of change or the status quo.
Understand that specific individuals and the values those individuals held had an impact on history.
• Understand significant events and people, including women and minorities, in the major eras of history.

How will you show that you UNDERSTAND this? First, choose an individual or group that you are passionate about, someone who was a promoter of change or the status quo. Then go crazy! How can you show your understanding? Be creative. Be genius.

Love you all! I really do!
Mrs. Krebs

Thoughts were flying. Women’s suffrage movement, the Holocaust, Civil Rights, the Civil War, and Kenneth James Weishuhn.

Hmmm. Maybe we CAN all be working on different projects at the same time as my colleague said he saw in Shawn’s classroom.

We’re trying it this week. Unlike Shawn’s class, we’re on the same standard today, but students are working on their own plan for understanding it.

I didn’t really create an assignment. There is no rubric. It’s student-centered. As the teacher, I was running around suggesting websites, finding books, answering questions, and trying to help them narrow their topics. Students were all energized and engaged in learning. It was fun, and the period when by fast. Mostly students were doing research today, but there was talk of blog posts, presentations, and videos.  We’re sharing on Friday. I’ll publish their products later.

But, for today, I am satisfied. My students and I are being promoters of change.

Later Posts
Part 2 Day 2 – Promoters of Change or the Status Quo
Part 3 Agents of Change vs. Status Quo

Do We Learn Most of All By Our Mistakes?

I’m a pretty good cook. People say so, anyway.

Do I have a natural aptitude for cooking? Maybe. Did I have good teachers? Perhaps. But, most of all, I was allowed to be curious and learn from my mistakes.

Like the time in junior high when our little kitchen group in cooking class turned up the oven to 450°F degrees to hurry the banana bread along. Earlier, when Mrs. Gies had told us we would have to bake it one day, and eat it the next day, we thought she was wrong. I suppose we were disappointed and suspicious enough to go against her directives. We cranked up the oven (Marlene was the instigator), and the bread raised and browned. It was a beautiful, perfect banana bread, beckoning us to eat it. Ha, we said to our teacher (under our breaths, of course). She was so cautious, and for nothing.

We set the table, poured the drinks, and placed our beautiful banana bread in the center of the table. We knew we were the envy of all the other expectant cooks in the surrounding seventh grade foods class kitchens.

However, when we sliced it, the raw goo, along with any vestige of our cooking cockiness, ran out onto the cutting board. I don’t believe Mrs. Gies “punished” us for going against her instructions. She was a wise woman who knew we learned more from our ruined banana bread than any scolding she could give us.

Another learning experience came the first time I tried to make a favorite family recipe. It was a disaster. The recipe was called Hamburger Pie. I missed a key instruction: brown the hamburger. Yes, I used raw hamburger in this recipe, and it was inedible when it finished baking. Because my older sister patiently explained to me what went wrong and helped me recook the filling so the ingredients weren’t wasted, I was able to learn from my mistakes.

I could go on and on about the mistakes I’ve made in the kitchen–uncleaned shrimp, egg whites that don’t whip in a blender, etc. etc. I am quite sure I have learned more from my mistakes than my successes.

I need to remember this in the classroom. I believe in student-centered learning, lifelong learning, student choice. I believe in STEM education, genius hour, and everything that would say YES to letting students be curious, get dirty, and make mistakes. I have to remember how powerful this kind of learning is.

I hope you are giving your students room to make mistakes!

How have you learned from your mistakes?