Here’s a photo of the summer to-do list that the maintenance staff at my school taped to my door over the summer. It contains a list of the chores that were scheduled to be completed over the two and half months that are quickly coming to a close.
One day over the break, I visited the school to check my in-box in the workroom. My students had entered a contest that last March and I knew that correspondence about the contest would arrive sometime over the summer. Read yesterday’s post for that exciting news!
After checking my inbox, I dashed down the hall to my room just to make sure it was there. If you’re a teacher, you know the feeling!
For the majority of the year, those rooms are our domains. As such, our classrooms are not so much our workspaces, as our homes, albeit our second ones. It’s nice to check in at least once during the summer to see where things have been moved since we left, or to pick up a book to read from our classroom shelves, or to find some papers we need for planning.
I approached the door to my room and noticed the to-do list. I read through all the mundane, simple cleaning tasks that were to be completed. Most of them were finished, but I decided to add a couple just for fun. I added “chocolate fountain” and “espresso machine” to the bottom because, well… chocolate and caffeine (hello).
Last week, when I dropped back in, I noticed my two requests remained untouched. No line had been crossed through them on the list. Were my requests over budget? Deemed unnecessary? Recognized for the joke they were? Oh, well. Maybe next year.
As I always tell my students when they desire something: “It never hurts to ask.”
Thanks for reading! Follow my blog for more tales from my middle school ELA classroom. Leave a comment about your BTS thoughts.
Joel R., a former eighth-grader who graduated from KMS in May, placed first with his poem “The Lucky Snag”; Allyson W., also a former eighth-grader who graduated from KMS in May, placed second with her poem “Breathe.” Zach B., who will be an eighth-grader this fall, placed third with his poem “A Deer’s Morning Graze.”
First- and second-place winners, Joel R. and Ally W.
The students each received cash prizes of $200, $100, and $50, respectively. Cash awards were sponsored by Majesty Outdoors, a nonprofit “focused on bringing awareness to the fatherless epidemic in our society,” according to the foundation’s website.
Winning entries will be printed in the December/January issue of Outdoors Unlimited, OWAA’s magazine.
Third-place winner Zach Burton and me.
This is the second year KMS students have participated in the contest. In 2017, Elijah D. placed second in the junior prose division.
“I am so proud of KMS students. With this contest in particular, every student is able to find an outdoor-related topic to write about and then they stick with their poems or essays and work so hard on them, revising them until they are sent to Montana,” said Marilyn Yung, language arts teacher at KMS.
I’ll post the winning poems in a post later this week. Follow me to get those.
If you ever decide to have your students enter this contest, use these winning entries as mentor texts. That’s exactly what I did to prepare my kids for writing their entries.
In addition to sending out the news release, I also made a big deal out of the news on my private class Instagram account.
I posted this meme on my class’ private Instagram account a few days before I announced it with a video.
I posted an Anchorman meme that there would be a “big announcement” coming soon. I also posted a video announcing the award. (I should have embedded the video into this post, but I failed. Sorry about that!)
On another note… Don’t forget to let others know about your activities in the classroom. Get to know your local newspapers and other media so you can notify them when good things happen.
The editor to whom I sent the above release usually runs what I email to him in one of the two newspapers he publishes locally. Do a little research, find the names and email addresses of the local editor at your local media offices, and start communicating with them.
Get some publicity for your school and the part you play in your profession.
Thanks for reading! Click like if you found this valuable. Follow my blog for more writing contest news, and other posts about teaching middle school ELA.
Reading notes from my current and former students is an instant pick-me-up
Do you have special notes, drawings, letters or small trinkets that students have given to you over the years?
About two years ago, I finally decided to keep track of those treasures by putting them into a box. However, the box took up so much space in my closet (read this post) that I finally decided to recycle a three-ring binder that I no longer needed for the purpose of holding all these reminders of “why I teach.” I transferred all those loose notes and other gifts into plastic page protectors and then placed all of those into the binder.
It’s a blessing when students take the time to write a note!
My “Why I Teach” binder is a better solution than that old box; it’s easy to find and doesn’t take up much space since it stores alongside all my other notebooks.
I absolutely love pulling that binder from the shelf every so often for the instant boost it gives me.
Reading the notes and cards and letters from former and current students is such a gift.
Gifts such as this Christmas tree ornament store nicely in a page protector.
At the end of a particularly long day or week, flipping through my “Why I Teach” binder provides a brief moment of quiet reflection, where I can recall those students who are now in high school or beyond… those students whom I had the pleasure of knowing during their middle school years, which are arguably the toughest years of anyone’s life.
Reading my students’ ideas, their thoughtful gratitude, and their humor brightens my day.
It doesn’t just remind me why I teach, but proclaims it!
Triangle Fire forms the first literature unit for my 8th-graders’ human rights dissertations
Here’s the chart that shows the progress each student has made during the school year. This goes up on my wall in early September and remains up until the project is finished in March.
This week I’ve been writing about the unit on the Triangle Waist Co. fire that my 8th-graders start the year with. For them, the last few weeks of seventh grade was an introduction, a sort of “paving the way” for the more in-depth reading and studying that we will begin in just two short weeks. Check out my Monday post on the Triangle Fire resources that I use and some of the activities that we do. Check out my post from yesterday that discussed how I connect Triangle Fire to another horrific disaster, the 9/11 attacks.
Today, I’m going to write about how the Triangle Fire study forms the first section of a project that I call the 8th-grade human rights dissertation. Human rights education is vitally important in my view.
If students don’t know what human rights are, how will they know when those rights are being violated?
There are many materials available to use in teaching human rights. Whem I began this project, I used materials produced by an organization known as Youth for Human Rights International. However, since I learned last year that YHRI is a front organization for the Church of Scientology International, I have decided not to use them anymore.
The human rights dissertation is a project that I have done with my 8th-graders for three years now. The first year was a complete trial-by-fire and I hesitate to even let it count since we literally ran out of time toward the end of the project. The second year was a success. Students completed the dissertations in the way I foresaw the project culminating. This past school year was again a successful year, and I would say an even more successful year than the first because I modified and/or improved the project in several ways, which I will discuss later.
The human rights dissertation is actually an expanded five-paragraph essay. Throughout the year, as we read and study these texts, students determine three human rights that each text supports or are revealed in the text that need protection or upholding.
It’s really up to the student to determine how they wish to discuss the rights; as the year progresses I am aware of the direction that they are taking with respect to the human rights and the literature we read. The founding document that we study even before we write the Triangle Fire section of the dissertation is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 1948 document drafted by a United Nations committee led by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, in response to the atrocities of World War II.
There are six sections to this project:
an introduction
Students write this usually after all their second drafts have been finalized, usually in mid-February. This introduces the entire scope of the paper. We spend a lot of time honing these sections and massaging them into being revelatory personal statements.
an explanation of human rights
-Students usually write their first draft for this section in September.
a section that connects the Triangle Fire to three human rights
-Students usually write their first draft for this section in October.
a section that connects “Inside Out and Back Again to three human rights
-Students usually write their first draft for this section in November.
a section that connects Frederick Douglass’ Narrative to three human rights
-Students usually write their first draft for this section in late January/early February.
a conclusion
Students usually write their first draft for this section in February
First drafts and second drafts are assigned as homework. I have very detailed take-home packets that provide students what they need to know for their drafts. First drafts can be any length, but second drafts will have a two- to three-page length requirement.
Second drafts for each portion are written throughout the year, i.e. they are not written immediately after their first drafts. I believe in taking a break from a piece of writing so the second draft will be a homework assignment a month or two after the first draft is written. This also gives students time to get that first draft written if they failed to do it on time initially.
Students keep paper copies of their first drafts, which have my notes and revision suggestions, in the file cabinet in the classroom. They also have digital copies in Google Drive.
As students turn in their drafts, I put a sticker on a large chart on the wall. At any moment, students and I can see their progress.
After we write our second drafts, students must pay special attention to connecting their “essays within the essay.” They complete several rounds of revision as they attempt to make their individual sections blend from one to the next. This gets interesting and students know by this time that this is a needed task.
I’ve even had students, before we get to this point of the project, ask me in class, “Mrs. Yung, how are we gonna make this flow? It can’t just sound like individual papers.” And then to myself, I think, “Hallelujah! They figured it out on their own!”
It’s so wonderful to know that they have learned how important it is to make our ideas connect smoothly in our writing.
This paper gives me the opportunity to reinforce the concept of what I call “interpretation,” the explanation that is needed when quoting from a source or text. This is a skill we practice all year, but the human rights dissertation is the project where this skill really shines. I require at a minimum that each quote from each text be followed by four to six sentences of explanatory exposition that reveals how the quote supports the point they are making.
My go-to piece of advice for students is to make their first or second sentence after a quote begins with “In other words,…”
Last minute additions to the paper include a comprehensive Works Cited page and a title page. The details for these items are included on a final to-do list that students use as they go through the project. The title for these papers is “Humanity Revealed: Understanding Human Rights Through Literature;” however, students may use another title if they wish.
This sheet also has several editing and revision requirements listed, as well as an approximate timeline. We devote about three to four weeks to revising and finalizing these papers in class. Lastly, I provide them with a heavy-duty Avery Flexi-View report cover.
It’s such a good feeling when students start turning in their dissertations– for them and me!
The human rights dissertation is really my “piece de resistance” of my language arts classes. By the time students finish theirs, they’ve been my students for three years, and I’ve learned so much about their abilities, their interests, their personalities, and their goals for the future.
I truly enjoy watching students wrap up their dissertations and they are always excited to see their accomplishment. Many of them will end up with a paper that is fifteen or more pages long. Some even really go “all out” and see just how much they can write. It’s always a discussion to see who has the longest paper! (And yes, I make a point to tell them that more doesn’t mean better, but for middle schoolers to be excited about writing “just one more page,” who am I to shut that down?!)
As this project kicks off in the fall, I will be posting about it and providing news and photos about any changes that I decide to make this year. One change I may make is to allow students the choice to add a World War II text to their paper. This change is discussed in this post I recently wrote called “How to Forget the Holocaust.” I plan to eventually add the handouts, timelines, and editing checklists to my future TpT store.
Thanks for reading! Follow my blog to find out more about this project and to receive updates about changes I make to it this year! Do you do a similar project with your students or do you have any suggestions for me? Feel free to leave a comment!
In doing so, Stein draws upon memory and the human tendency to forget the lessons we learn as we progress (or fail to progress).
Photo: Pixabay
Stein specifically focuses on building code changes instituted following Triangle Fire that were later modified (and by modified, I mean relaxed) during the preliminary planning for the building of the World Trade Center towers in the late 1960s.
Here is an important passage from Stein that shows how he draws connections between the two tragedies:
Now imagine this: “Roughly sixty years have gone by (since the Triangle fire), and there have been no major building disasters since 2001. The building industry argues, with decades of recent history to back it up, that buildings are excessively safe and that the number of tragedies in which the excess safety has mattered has proved to be low, and perhaps zero. Spirited dissent from the few remaining old fogies who have personal recollections of 2001 sounds as antiquated as memories of Pearl Harbor do to most of us alive today. It has not happened in so long, it probably will not happen again. That, more or less, is what happened in New York in 1968. Fifty-seven years after the Triangle Waist Company fire, in which 146 people trapped in the upper floors of an unsafe building burned, jumped, or fell from a collapsed fire escape to their deaths, New York City relaxed its safety rules for high-rise buildings. Technology had changed. Firefighting skills had improved. High-rise fires could be restricted to a few stories, and in most cases people could move a floor or two away from the danger and wait safely for emergency responders to complete their jobs.”
This powerful paragraph powerfully engages my students and shows them how studying something buried in the past like Triangle Fire can indeed have ramifications upon contemporary times. This book review is an incredibly important part of my Triangle Fire and 9/11 unit. I am so grateful I stumbled upon it while researching online.
Another important passage: “The towers, like many lesser high-rises, were built under the assumption that there would never be an occasion in which all occupants would need to vacate at once.”
When I read the following paragraph, I am amazed at the leniencies given to the WTC developers.
And still another: “The Empire State Building, completed in 1931 under the more demanding standards required by an earlier code, has nine stairwells at its broad base and six that run the entire height of the building, one of which serves as an air-locked fire tower that is supposed to be more impervious to smoke. Each of the 1,350-foot tall World Trade Center towers, with slightly greater height, nearly double the rentable square footage, and the capacity for about 33% more occupants, had only three stairwells throughout-the same number as would have been required for a seventy-five-foot building-and no fire tower. All three of these stairwells were bunched together in the least rentable space in the core of the building. Two of the three stairwells in each building went only as far down as the mezzanine, a feature that one fire chief had described as ‘a major building design flaw”‘ in a report commissioned after the 1993 bombing.”
As we make connections between Triangle Fire and the World Trade Center attacks, I make it clear to students that I do not intend to place fault on the WTC engineers and architects for any part of the 9/11 atrocity. After all, Stein’s review and this World Trade Center evacuation study notes that 87 percent of the people in the towers evacuated safely within two hours. The remaining 13 percent, however, causes me to grieve when I know that it’s possible that some shortcuts (and other factors out of the control of builders) may have contributed in some way to their inability to escape. See the evacuation study for more on this.
Photo: Unsplash
It’s important that we link events from the distant past to those of the present, relatively speaking. History won’t be boring if we show how it affects students’ lives today and then ask students to reflect upon those effects through writing.
Thanks for reading! Tune in tomorrow when I discuss an assignment about Triangle Fire that finds its way into a culminating project known as the 8th-grade human rights dissertation.
Resources for teaching about the event that put a fire alarm in your classroom
Taken on March 25, 1911 | The New York World, Mar. 26, 1911
On August 15, my 8th-graders will pick up where we left off in May—with a prelude to our study of the 1911 Triangle Waist Co. factory fire and its societal effects.
During the last few days of school, we watched a portion ofNew York City: The Documentary. It’s usually available at no charge if you have an Amazon Prime account. It is an excellent film that fills eight DVDs, and is directed by Ric Burns, the brother of award-winning documentarian Ken Burns. Interspersing historical photography with contemporary interview clips, including one of Donald Trump commenting on New York City architecture and geology, the film discusses the first wave of immigration of the early 1900s and its effects on our nation’s cultural heritage and economic strength.
The film helps students build the prior knowledge they will need to study the Triangle Fire tragedy next month when school starts. This disaster, noted as being the worst workplace fire in our nation’s history prior to 9/11, resulted in the death of 114 mostly female immigrant workers of Eastern European descent.
This website adds to what students learn in the film with an extensive selection of files. Check out this website from Cornell University to see profiles of survivors, obituaries of those who perished, timelines, newspaper accounts and other historical artifacts to complement the film, and the books that are discussed later in this post. This site is a a true treasure trove.
We will begin reading portions of Flesh and Blood So Cheap by Albert Marrin immediately when school starts. I read part of this text aloud and then I assign a chapter or two to students to read in groups at the four tables spread throughout my classroom. At the tables, students read the text jigsaw style, answering questions regarding their respective chapters. After reading their chapter, each student reports back to their “home” group to brief their group members on the particular chapters they read.
Doing this jigsaw activity is a good way for students to capture the gist of the chapters within the book. Working in groups is beneficial and helps students understand the big picture of what I would like students to learn about this time in history: our national response to this disaster and how our society ultimately learned from its failure.
Our reading activities for Triangle Fire are interspersed with text-based questions that students answer in writing. The style and format of these short text-based question activities are a mainstay of my teaching. I was inspired to create these prompts by this article about New Dorp High School in The Atlantic magazine.
These exercises are a prompt of sorts with some student choice built in. And while I realize the prompts are very formulaic, I’m okay with that, since I believe students need guidance in using the specific tools writers use to express their ideas clearly.
Note: I’ll be writing a post next week with more details about these text-based question exercises, so follow my blog to get a notification if you’re interested in learning more.
Additional short readings are introduced as well in the Triangle Fire unit. We read from a pivotal text, called Triangle: The Fire that Changed America, written by David Von Drehle. It’s a fascinating book with exciting narrative passages that perfectly illustrate how writers blend narrative into a nonfiction text. Von Drehle’s book explores the causes of the disaster and the outcomes of it. One chief result from the Triangle Fire are the better working conditions that came out of the Factory Investigating Commission, which was established in the fire’s aftermath.
Those better working conditions are something all students can relate to: fire drills. In fact, at the beginning of the unit, I ask students:
Why do we have fire drills?
When did these fire drills start?
Who decided that fire drills are necessary?
These discussions about the positives that came out of the tragedy are important. In fact, focusing on the good that resulted from such a horrifying tragic event —where scores of women jumped to their deaths to escape the factory flames— is about the only way I can see to present this topic. (After all, I’m not out to depress anyone or to add to anyone’s anxiety.)
I must focus on the positive take-away from Triangle Fire: to show students that we can learn from our mistakes. We can take the horrible events of life and turn them around for good. Yes, so many precious lives were lost… but ultimately not in vain.
Triangle Fire resulted in those red fire alarms that are placed in every classroom.
Triangle Fire resulted in outward hinged doors in places of business.
Triangle Fire resulted in fire drills, sprinklers, and other precautions that businesses and public spaces are required to provide for workers and the public.
Learning about Triangle Fire, reflecting, and writing about it will give my students greater understanding of the forces that have shaped our society. It will also make them more empathetic and well-rounded with their world knowledge. We complete the following writing activities to gain a better understanding of Triangle Fire:
Text-based question prompts
Student’s choice of an essay that may be either
informational (as in writing a survivor profile)
argumentative essay (arguing any number of topics, such as the justice in the final acquittal of the negligent factory owners)
or narrative (as in writing a letter written by a survivor or surviving family member)
An essay that discusses three human rights found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that were not protected and/or were violated in the time leading up to the Triangle Fire.
So this is where I will begin the new school year with my eighth-graders. While Triangle Fire is a devastating subject to teach, it is also inspiring and ultimately a testament to the resilience and innovation of our great nation.
Thanks for reading! Click like if this resonated with you. Feel free to leave a comment or questions and to follow my blog!
In tomorrow’s post, I’ll be writing about how I connect Triangle Fire to the events of Sept. 11, 2001. In the meantime, read my post of 9/11 resources. Also this week, I’ll be sharing about the human rights dissertation that eighth-graders complete in the spring. The last essay bulleted above provides one part of this dissertation.
I’m ready to take full advantage of the final two weeks of summer
“I pulled the door open and perused the possessions of my teaching life.”
Two days ago, I drove to school and made my first entrance into the 2018-2019 year. Three eighth-grade girls were there waving at me from the front door as I loaded up my arms with bags from the back seat of my car. The girls were there for basketball practice, which would start in about an hour. Guess they’re excited for things to get rolling, I thought.
As I approached the front door, the girls made a tunnel with their arms. I jogged below their waving hands and we all cheered. It was a reverse, of sorts, of the final day of the school year two months earlier.
That’s when the teachers and staff at my small, rural middle school had formed a tunnel, like we always do, at the front door and cheered and showered the kids with hand sparkles as they made that final trip of the year to the waiting bus.
It was a fun and final moment… the culmination of nine months of planning, teaching, listening, cheering, testing, playing, working, and encouraging. Passing back through the girls’ tunnel into the school yesterday was a reminder that another fun and productive nine months is about to begin.
Once inside, I caught up on summer news with the girls and then made my way down the hall to my classroom. Two other teachers were there, I noticed. One nearly had her room prepared; the other, I learned later, was just getting started.
I dug the key to my room from the zippered pouch inside my purse, and unlocked my room… the first of hundreds of times I will do this over the next several months, I thought.
I clicked on the lights. Every piece of furniture had been moved to one side of the room by the maintenance staff to make room for floor waxing. Chairs were stacked on tables. Desks were stacked on other desks. My kidney bean table– that I used to abhor, but now love, and I’ll tell you why later—was wedged behind the chipped, decrepit black bookshelves left by a teacher who had moved away two years earlier.
Boxes of items I requisitioned last spring were angled on top of the second-hand coffee table that normally holds bins of headphones and clipboards. Floor lamps teetered awkwardly between desks. A giant black trash bag hovered under a table, stuffed with the silk and plastic English ivy I will later use to dress up the bookshelves.
The room echoed as I strode across the tile. I set down my bags, opened a few of the boxes, and looked over at my closet. The right-hand door bulged open a half-inch and I remembered being unable to close it fully on the last day of school. It seemed only moments had passed since that final day when I had tried to rearrange the things inside so the door would fully close. I had eventually given up; the prospect of two months of summer freedom enticed me to just walk away.
I pulled the door open and perused the possessions of my teaching life— books, binders, trinkets from students, folders, a milk crate, rolled up posters, a skein of red yarn, hand sanitizer, Lysol wipes, my golden “good luck” cat that waves from my desk during the year, DVDs, a glue gun, leftover soda from club meetings.
I snapped the picture you see above and decided to leave. For while I’m excited for the school year to start, I’m also ready to take full advantage of the final two weeks of summer. I still have blog posts to write, a book or two I want to read, a short story I want to hash out, a daytrip to take with my daughter, and a guitar to strum around on.
I read somewhere recently that the end of July is the Sunday night of every teacher’s weekend during the school year, when we maximize those last lingering moments of “me” time. It’s time to do just that, I said to myself. I pressed against the door and closed it.
My closet can wait.
Thanks for reading! Leave a comment if you have the same thoughts about the last days of summer. Follow my blog for more writing about teaching middle school ELA, including that post about why I love my heavy, awkward kidney bean table.
We’re jumping into year two of this 7th-grade PBL project
Photo: Jigar Gamit on Pxhere
We’re doing it again! My seventh-graders will again this upcoming school year be writing the content for a newsletter for kids called Whippersnappers. It’s an activity my students produce in partnership with the White River Valley Historical Society, a regional organization based in Forsyth, Mo.
Last year, the idea for a unique PBL project resulted at the end of the summer when I placed a call to the WRVHS’s director, Leslie Wyman. I simply asked if the society had any writing or research-related needs that my seventh-graders could help with. She replied that, yes, as a matter of fact, their children’s newsletter could use some revamping and some “new blood.”
And just like that, this unique project was born.
My students were so excited when they learned about the project last fall. Many of them jumped right into our brainstorming sessions where we came up with article ideas. They also enjoyed and listened carefully when Wyman visited one day to get the ball rolling. They especially loved taking field trips to the society’s two local museums.
My students listen to WRVHS Director Leslie Wyman explain how to research for their Whippersnapper stories.
The best moment of all? When Wyman hand-delivered the first issue. They loved seeing their names or their classmates’ names in print. It was a good feeling. We produced a total of four issues and I plan to continue the program this fall with my new seventh-graders. They know all about the project (since most are subscribers) and most seem interested in picking up the baton and running with the second year.
I was just at school yesterday morning unpacking boxes that held the items I requisitioned last spring. Inside one package was a clear plexiglass brochure holder that I’ll mount near the door to my room. Here is where I’ll post extra copies of the newsletter. The cardboard sign that our graphic design students created last year looks a little tired; my new holder should work perfectly.
As I begin to plan for fall, I have a few things to do to get ready for Whippersnappers year 2:
I’ll have to dig out the “story starter” page that I created with my students last year to help them begin to assemble ideas and notes for their stories.
I’ll also have to remember to schedule a day to show them how to access historical articles on the WRVHS’s website. These were our main sources of information for our stories last year, and I’m not entirely happy with that. I would prefer there be a wider mix of sources–other online articles and databases, in-person interviews, books–for students to use.
Fine-tune more research methods. Privacy and safety concerns are my main concerns when determining other research sources. In order to learn more about that, I may need to meet with Wyman before school starts to see what alternative ways we can develop for kids to safely and privately find information.
One idea: Private Facebook group where students anonymously interact with researchers at the WRVHS? That’s one idea Wyman and I have bantered about, but haven’t acted upon yet. This fall may be the time to pursue that idea.
The first issue of Whippersnappers, Oct. 2017
Another goal for this upcoming school year: boosting the circulation of the Whippersnappers.
Could it be promoted to other area schools?
Could it be promoted to area readers through libraries?
Could we secure corporate support? The WRVHS utilizes grant money to print and mail the Whippersnappers right now. Is there a local company who would like to work with us? So many questions!
Regardless, I’m excited to start another year of Whippersnappers. I think it’s so important for students to write for a real-world publication. When I was a seventh-grader, I would have loved to see my name in print like my students do.
The second issue of Whippersnappers, Dec. 2017
It’s my sincere hope that my students will see that they have the ability to be real-world writers, especially since they already are… thanks to the Whippersnappers and the WRVHS.
Thanks for reading! Follow my blog to hear how the second year of the Whippersnappers goes. I’ll be posting about it this fall. If you have any unique PBL projects, I’d love to hear about them. Feel free to leave a comment!
A back-to-school poem perfect for the first day (updated 8/21)
“The Sometimes Poem” was one of my favorite ways to go back to school with my middle schoolers.
I used this project for two years with sixth-graders and loved it both times before I changed jobs to my current high school position.
The Sometimes Poem includes three skills: poetry techniques, revision, and submitting for publication. I credit children’s and YA author, Kate Messner, for her inspiration and ideas for this project.
In 2016, I attended the Write To Learn Conference and sat in on Messner’s presentation on revision strategies. Her presentation allowed the teachers in attendance to create and revise their own “Sometimes” poems.
Here’s how I presented this lesson that’s based on Messner’s slideshow and her excellent book, Real Revision. I tweaked Messner’s slideshow quite a bit for this lesson by mainly using her slides that included her Sometimes Poem and the slides about theme.
First, download the PDF of Messner’s Google Slides presentation by clicking the bar below this screenshot:
Then, skim through the slideshow to become familiar with the project. (Messner’s Sometimes Poem begins on slide 23.) Notice that I have hidden some of the slides for this project. As you skim, you may decide to modify my changes to fit your needs and students.
Ask students to write for three minutes to describe a place that they love. We use pencils and paper for this to get fresher ideas and more thoughtful writing. Laptops can be used later after revision and before submitting to the publisher.
Before students begin, I share a paragraph I’ve written about my favorite place, which is on a swing in my yard. My paragraph serves as a mentor text.
After three minutes, ask if students would like two or three more minutes, extend the time. usually, in my experience, students need a few minutes more.
Students may share their writing about their favorite places.
Have students listen as you read aloud from Messner’s own poem, “Sometimes On a Mountain in April.” Messner’s poem can also serve as a mentor text, but in addition, it shows students how their paragraph will soon be transformed into a poem.
Show students your attempt at turning your paragraph into a poem. Read aloud one more time your paragraph, and then read to them your poem. Discuss with students how to pull details from the paragraph to create lines for a poem that are filled with imagery.
Also show students at this point how to use repetition in their poem, just like Messner did. She added the words “Sometime on a mountain in April” about every three lines. This creates a poetic structure and rhythm to their writing.
For me, this step is usually when students really begin to like what they’ve written. Have students transform their paragraph into poetry. You’ll need about five to eight minutes for this step, but allow more if students need it. For those who struggle, help them locate one detail that they can craft into a line of a poem. After helping them do this one line, it’s their turn to find another.
After students have six lines for their poem, tell them that it’s time to revise.
Go deep with a quick discussion of theme… what the poem is REALLY about. On the surface, my poem is about sitting in a swing in my yard. However, it’s REALLY about appreciating the little things in life. In a word, contentment. I learned to spend a small amount of time on theme with this project, but not too much. If students can end up telling you what their poem is about on the surface AND what it’s really about, then you’re good. Let revision be the focus for this project.
To revise, ask students to add more imagery and sensory language. To do this, have students add one fragrance to their poem. It should be a new line of poetry. Show them yours. It’s good to have your original six lines on the board. Then add the new fragrance line(s) below. Students may add as many lines as they would like, but one helps them see how sensory language enriches their writing.
Keep revising! Have students add one more of the five senses to their poem. They definitely have sight if they’ve written anything at all, and they’ve also added in a fragrance. Students should be adding a sound, a taste, or a texture to their poem now. Show them yours again, if needed, as a mentor text. With this step, students see that adding details is one way to revise.
Revise some more! Have students scan their poem for these overused words: very, really, just. With this step, students see that removing unnecessary words is another way to revise.
Keep at it! Have students remove five more unnecessary words. Tell students to look for the least important words. If kids struggle to find five, require that they at least remove three.
Now revise with a partner! Put slide 95 on your screen and leave it there for the partner work. Have one student pass out a pink, green, yellow, and pink highlighter to each student. Note: Use any four different colors, but everyone needs to have the same colors. Read aloud this slide first with your students after they pair up.
Students will use the pink highlighter to indicate areas that should be removed. They’ll use green to indicate confusing areas. Blue indicates areas that should be more precise or more detailed. Yellow indicates that a line or area is effective as is.
Before students begin highlighting, pass out one sticky note to each student. Tell students that they are to write notes for your partner that explain your highlighting (if needed) and to offer suggestions.
When students are finished highlighting and writing notes on the sticky note, show them the “When your partner is done” slide. Have students rework their own poem again, considering their partner’s suggestions.
Use this moment to revisit theme. Have students ask themselves “What is my poem about? What is my poem REALLY about? Is that theme clear in my poem?” You may need to help students think of words and phrases that will help them convey their theme. This is tough. Don’t stress it with your sixth-graders. It’s good that they are putting effort into this higher-level skill.
So that’s the basic framework for this exciting poetry project. I used it for two years with both sixth- and seventh-graders each August. It was a great way to get back into the “writing zone” and it helped me get to know my students and their personalities. In fact, here’s a poem written by one of my students last year:
Sometimes in a Tree Stand
by Alex J.
Sometimes when I’m sitting in my tree stand,
early in the morning,
I can hear dogs barking through the hills
and can see the birds fly above us.
Sometimes when I’m sitting in my tree stand,
I can hear the leaves crunching when animals walk,
and sometimes smell the pine trees.
Sometimes in the tree stand,
I can feel the morning breeze.
Then time goes on.
The dogs go quiet,
and the birds settle down.
The leaves stop crunching.
And the smell of the pine trees
are replaced by the smell of the day.
The morning breeze dies down,
and I know it’s time to leave,
but I’ll come back tomorrow.
The heavy emphasis on revision subtly shows students challenging and fun ways to add sensory language and delete unnecessary verbiage from their poems. What’s more, it exposes students to theme and guides them in seeking elements of deeper meaning in their work.
But that’s not all! Have your students enter their “Sometimes” poem in Creative Communication’s Poetry Anthology contest. Their work just might be published in a hardcover book! Alex J’s. poem (above) was published and showed Alex that he has real potential as a writer. Read this post for more information about the anthologies.
I can’t tell you how great it is when students realize they’re sending their poems to a publisher. They will definitely step up their effort and take greater care with their work once they know their poems are going places! In fact, you may want to tell them at the beginning of the project that they will eventually submit their poems to a publisher. I assure you that it will set the stage for more engagement.
You should try Sometimes Poems!I really think you’ll enjoy using this project for back-to-school.
Share your experiences in the comments below or use my Contact page to ask a question about this project or to let me know how I can help you get back into the swing of school. I’ll respond within 24 hours via email.
Thanks for reading again this week!
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Treasured Object Poems
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There’s a standard for that, and students are mastering it.
Students get it. They are learning to appreciate the historical and cultural contexts of literature. Photo by João Silas on Unsplash
There are two reading standards contained in the Missouri Learning Standards that address the historical and cultural contexts of the literature that students in grades 6-12 read during their education. One standard, coded RL3C, specifically requires students to be able to explain how a story’s plot and conflict reflect historical and/or cultural contexts. The other standard, coded RI3C, requires students to explain, more generally, how a nonfiction text reflects historical and/or cultural contexts.
Both standards reveal educators’ and legislators’ expectations that student readers recognize the era or timeframe in which a narrative or article is written. It could also be said that students are expected to take into account the prevailing attitudes of that era when evaluating, discussing, and even merely appreciating the work.
According to an ALA press release, “This award honors an author or illustrator whose books, published in the United States, have made, over a period of years, a significant and lasting contribution to children’s literature.” Formerly called the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, the prize is now named the Children’s Literature Legacy Award.
In effect, the removal of Wilder’s name from the ALSC’s award ignores two things: 1) the values these standards support and 2) the work of teachers (in Missouri, at least) who are actively teaching their students to:
recognize and explain the historical contexts of the literature that they read.
consider how texts reflect the history of the era in which they were written.
appreciate a historical author’s work, including its prejudices and biases, without feeling it necessary to denigrate the author.
For example, students are prepared to read Little House on the Prairie and understand that Laura’s descriptions of the Osage Indians reflect her biases and prejudices. Students can also do this with Huckleberry Finn, To Kill A Mockingbird or any other text they may read.
Let’s give students some credit, ALSC. Thanks to these two standards, students get it. They understand how a piece of literature can be biased, show prejudice, and perpetuate stereotypes, but at the same time, be considered an important record of a specific time in history.
Thanks for reading! Click like so others can more easily find this post. Follow my blog for more essays on education and, more specifically, middle school ELA.
