educating alice

In late December 2006 I started a class blog and gave each of my students a blog of his or her own. Having only started this blog a few months earlier, it was an exciting time as I (with the great help of Ellen Nickles, a technologist at my school) and the children explored more and more ways to learn with the blogs.

This year I started the class blog in September and use it constantly. If I had modeled a piece of writing for an assignment I put it on the blog. If we’d made a chart of ideas I put it on the blog. Everything we did was there for the kids, the parents, and me to refer to. And so when they were given their own blogs in January they were eager and ready to go.

Since then we’ve taught the kids to scan in images and add them into their posts, do links, categories, and podcasts. They created their own banners and tag lines. It has been amazing and wonderful; I keep getting inspired with new ideas for them every day.

In addition to the class blog being a great archive for me (as I go back and look at last year’s posts when teaching something), the student blogs have become archives for them. In other words, electronic portfolios. I have accordion files for each child in a file cabinet and they put finished projects in them. For example, after weeks of hard work they have completed Cinderella stories and placed their many drafts in those files. As for their final stories, they will be publishing them on their blogs next week. Already on them are their Amistad poems and lots of other writing. Today we begin our Pilgrim unit and they will be putting a great deal of the work they do for it on their blogs.

And so, in addition to all the other great educational reasons for blogging with kids is the one that blogs are electronic portfolios — for teachers and kids.

Last Friday’s Literary Salon featured my students reading selections from the monologues and dialogues of Laura Amy Schlitz’s Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! For a few weeks beforehand I’d read them one or two a day during our morning meeting. Each child selected one, practiced at home, and then read it on Friday. Not only that — I recorded their readings, turned them into audio files, and yesterday the kids put them on their individual blogs as podcasts. Of course, they are not as polished as those of the Park School fifth graders for whom the pieces were originally written, but my students had fun with them and performed them ably. Do have a look, a listen, and comment if you are so inclined. (They are very eager for comments!)

HUGO, the lord’s nephew

TAGGOT, the blacksmith’s daughter

ALICE, the shepherdess

THOMAS, the doctor’s son

MOGG, the villein’s daughter

OTHO, the miller’s son

SIMON, the knight’s son

EDGAR, the falconer’s son

ISOBEL, the lord’s daughter

BARBARY, the mudslinger

JACOB BEN SALOMON, the moneylender’s son and PETRONELLA, the merchant’s daughter

PASK, the runaway

PIERS, the glassblower’s apprentice

MARIOT and MAUD, the glassblower’s daughters

NELLY, the sniggler

Drogo, the tanner’s apprentice 

GILES, the beggar

Our classroom theme for the year is immigration. We begin by discussing the children’s own metaphoric migration from a small lower school to our very large middle and high school building. We move out to oral histories — they interview people they know about their own experiences coming to America. Along the way we see movies, go places (Ellis Island, Lower East Side Tenement Museum and Walking Tour, Museum of Chinese in America), read works of historical fiction, and more. (This year, for example, we had a wonderful time with Shaun Tan’s The Arrival.)

We then move back to the time of forced immigration from Africa, the time of slavery in America. Because of my two years in Sierra Leone, I like to do a lot with the African connection. And because the captives were mostly Mende and because they went home to Africa, I love teaching the Amistad story. In fact, I’ve been working on a book for children about Sarah Magru Kinson, one of four children on the ship. Last year I put it on a blog for my students to read; this year I made it available to the other fourth grade classes. It has been wonderful to get their feedback. Here is this year’s introduction for my class. Here, here, here, and here are some of their posts about the story.

After reading and writing about the story, I showed the children a series of poems about enslavement and/or the Amistad.  I then showed them the poem the class wrote last year with Natasha Trethewey and invited them to write their own.  These will be integrated into collages like these from last year and posted on their blogs.   Their poems are wonderful and I can’t wait to see them completed!

I’m also incredibly touched and moved by the emails I’m getting from the children in other classes.  I have to thank Laura Amy Schlitz for making me brave enough to give the story to them. Last year I felt skittish about even letting my own class read it, but now that I know that Laura wrote her plays for students in her school originally I somehow felt much more relaxed about my work being used in my school.

Over the summer I refurbished the class blog (using a new template and banner image) and, with school underway, am using it all the time.

One way is for homework as I have a page for this. On it is an image of a page from their plan book (scroll down to the end to see it) showing exactly how I want them to record their nightly reading (as it is the most important homework I give).

And then I’m using it to post lessons. That is, after doing one, I’m putting up the models, instructions, and such for kids to refer back to if they need to. These are also there for parents to see what we are doing. For example, the first writing assignment is what I call an “author blurb.” After looking at two for E. B. White from the back of different editions of Charlotte’s Web I pair the children off, they interview each other, and then write up short blurbs. On the blog I put the instructions and my model interview (with a colleague) and the draft of the blurb I wrote in front of the children.

And then there is our bigger immigration oral history unit. This takes months as the children interview immigrants, transcribe the recordings, and create picture books. Before they do these individually we do one all together. So first I posted an overview of what we’d be doing. After I did the model interview I posted the transcript and a podcast of it. (The podcast is at the very end of the post.) It was very cool to be able to have the children listen to specific parts of the interview while looking at the transcript. This way I didn’t need to tell them what the ellipses and brackets meant — they figured them out all by themselves!

Now the children each have one part of the interview to illustrate. Once they’ve done so I’m going to teach them how to scan their illustrations and will put them up on the class blog as well.

By January when I will give the children their own blogs they should be very used to working with them because of this class blog. Or so I hope!

One of my favorite teaching units of the year is the Many Faces of Alice unit. I begin by reading the book aloud, have the kids take a close look at the various illustrators, and then ask them to do a project of their own. When Roxanne Feldman came to Dalton she came up with the wonderful idea of putting a complete kid- illustrated version of the book on-line; we did this in 1998 and in 1999.

In 2000 I began having the children do Toy Theater productions. I bought a beautiful toy theater at Pollack’s Toy Theater Museum in London , had the kids create scenery and puppets, a script, and we filmed the results and put them online here, here, here. and here.

Then last year Roxanne came up with a new idea — to have the kids do a sort of book trailer — that is, they’d do a series of drawings and then a voice-over. The result wouldn’t be quite stop-motion animation (as that was way too time-consuming), but no longer a series of still pages either. We didn’t put last year’s version on-line, but this year’s is here on our class blog. Do visit and comment! I’m thrilled with the results and I think the kids are too.

A few weeks ago, while my students were at gym, an associate teacher and I created a yellow construction paper road that led from the door of the classroom to Oz, in this case the Emerald City pages of Robert Sabuda’s pop-up version carefully balanced on a stool in the center of the classroom with a pile of Baum’s books elegantly scattered below.

When the kids came into the classroom they were instructed musically to “Follow the Yellow Brick Road,” and did so to our Oz, picked up a book, and went to Munchkin Land — I mean, their desks — where they discovered a few tasty gummy letters (in various colors including green and gold) and a little chapbook.

And so we began our study of L. Frank Baum’s American fairy tale, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. I love having the kids read this book after our study of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It is truly THE American fairy tale. While I’ve never seen anything that makes clear that Baum was at all influenced by Carroll’s tale, I don’t see how he could have avoided it. Alice was so popular and it is the story of a little girl going into a fantasy land, after all. Certainly it is very different — Carroll’s story is almost plotless while Baum’s is very dramatic and full of adventure. Carroll is more interested, it seems, in language, puns, parody, and humor; Baum seems more interested in creating an entertaining story for American boys and girls. Both are fun in very different ways.

I have my students read the book (a facsimile of the original with Denslow’s illustrations) on their own; it is completely accessible to all levels of readers. I have on display the other thirteen Oz books by Baum and additional copies of the two that follow the first one for those who finish quickly. I ask them to write/draw a response to each chapter in the little booklets, but that is all. I really want them to have fun reading the book and they do!

Before beginning I show them, “The Dreamer of Oz, a docudrama about L. Frank Baum which is very interesting because he is so completely and utterly different from Carroll. And the biographical details that connect to the story of Dorothy and Oz fascinate them.

After they are all finished with the book we watch the MGM movie together. Some have seen it before, but not all. The differences intrigue them — most of all those familiar ruby slippers, silver in the book. We also watch a documentary on the making of the movie that further captivates. And then the kids write an essay answering the question: Is the movie a good or a bad witch, I mean, adaptation of the book? You can read some of this year’s responses by way of the class blog (go to the children’s blogs on the right to read their posts on this topic).

When time permits the kids do projects. Last year they made board games and had a blast playing them during the last few days of school. I’m not sure if we will have time this year, but here are a few of last year’s to give you a taste.

At the very, very, very end of school when we’ve finished the presentation portfolios for the parent reception and cleaned the room, I show them Disney’s Return to Oz. Few seem to be familiar with this film, but it is fascinating after reading Baum’s book and seeing the MGM movie — a combination of the second and third Oz books it connects to Baum, the books’ illustrators, the MGM movie, and is a story all of its own.

It is an ideal final unit of the year — every kid enjoys the book, the movie is still fun to watch, writing about it a snap, and all in all a lotta fun! If you have never read the book and only know the story from the MGM movie, give it a try — it is quite different and very entertaining.

It is over at Amy Bowllan’s Blog at School Library Journal and more about my history as an educational technology person and my doing blogs and so on and so forth. Thanks, Amy, for the opportunity!

I’m so excited! I’ve just been awarded The Miss Rumphius Award for “… your impressive ideas for how to use a weblog to support classroom literacy at your Edinger House blog site at http://blogs.dalton.org/Edinger.”

Members of the RTEACHER listserv present the Miss Rumphius Award to educators who develop and share exceptional Internet resources for literacy and learning. It honors teachers who make our world a more beautiful place, like the title character in the book Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney. Because Miss Rumphius scattered lupine seeds wherever she went, we use this flower as the symbol for our award.

Teaching with blogs continues to be incredibly exciting. The biggest problem (as is always the case with something new) is time. Not only time for me to think through what I’m doing, but to plan, to look at other class blogs, to deal with technological woes (e.g. spam, spam, and more spam), for the kids to post (as we’ve got lots of other exciting projects underway), and to read every single one of their posts and comments (with eighteen kid blogs and one class blog it is a lot).

That said, I’m still loving it. Lately we’ve been having the kids simply post various things they’ve written or drawn. Their most recent posts are news articles about their forced immigration unit (an assignment done by a superb associate teacher) and are excellent! (You can read them by going to the class blog here and then to the kids’ blogs which are linked over on the right) I love the way the blogs are becoming electronic portfolios with just about everything the kids have been doing lately.

I’ve also been using the main class blog as another place to post assignments (in addition to my oral directions, writing on the board, in handouts, and on charts). Here’s a Pilgrim Jeopardy one we just did.

The class blog is also a great electronic bulletin board. A week ago I wrote a post here about my plans for a Literary Salon involving “Jabberwocky.” The event took place on Monday and throughout the week a number of kids were creating their own versions of the poem in art and words. Yesterday I was able to put those into a post for all to see.

And then there are those kids who are such avid bloggers that they do way more than what is required. These kids post additional book reviews, poems, and more. Check out c15am, c15ck, c15hu, c15jg, c15mb1, c15md, and c15zb’s blogs to see more!

A favorite weekly event in my classroom is Literary Salon. A couple of kids bring in baked treats, I provide juice, and a bunch of the kids do prepared readings from books they are reading or have recently finished.

We all love it. Yes, they love the treats, but they also genuinely love both reading aloud and listening to each other. Every child participates. Because they prepare the readings ahead of time there is none of the halting-stumbling-over-words that occurs in round-robin reading (which I hate and never do). Some of the best readings come from some of the weakest readers because they’ve taken the most time to prepare.

One lovely result is that children become intrigued by the readings and eagerly go off to find the books in question to read. The cross-pollination is delightful! With the introduction of our blogs we’ve been able to podcast these events. So far we’ve done two. Please do check them out here and here. (And comment please — the kids are so eager for comments!)

Yesterday we did a very special Literary Salon. Poet Natasha Trethewey had come a few weeks ago to inspire the children to write Amistad poems. And yesterday they recited those poems to her. You can see their poems here and hear their recitations here.