Topics for Poetry

List a few things –

 items you can find in your house
(metal magnet doll house

Dogs and cats

Stacks of books

Noise, poems and stories

San Francisco Chronicle

Fudge and stacks of cookies
Antiques

Paper Weights

furniture polish

Things found around the house in the yard

Snakes and tarantulas
dogs
lawn mowers
swimming pools
Fords and Pink Cadillac’s
Bicycles and balls
Wheel Barrows
Tools

Things outside your yard in the neighborhood

Cement sidewalks
Friends houses – Polly and Kathy
melted tar road

Names of family and Relatives that link to your past
Aunt Donna and Uncle Pat
Grandmother and Grandfather
stories about Lapham Grand’s

Auntie Iris and Uncle Claris

Common Family Sayings –
things you were told all the time

What did you do to cause it?

They are ignorant?

The Balloon went up

Clean your room

Wash your car

Check in at eleven

Sit up straight

I have taught you, now I will trust your choices,
don’t do anything to lose my trust

Work harder than everybody else

Names of Foods and Special Dishes

Special K Bars

Enchiladas at Grandmothers

Barbecued Chicken, rice-a-roni, corn

5 pounds of fudge

Christmas Cookies

John, Don’t eat that!

Who drank the last of the milk

Karen eating eggs for two days

Boxed mashed potatoes

The names of places you can keep your
 childhood memories

Boxes under the bed

Boxes in the garage

The coffee table

Shelves with books

Recipe cards

Drawers

Secret cabinet in the desk

Mentor Assignment

Select six people who have influenced your life. For each person write images, stuff and memories

Inventions

Greatest invention of mankind

1.      Printing press

2.      Electrical wiring and usage

3.      Plumbing

4.      Wheel

5.      Weaving

Interview one another
Looking for:
1 Where do they live? (habitat)
2. What do they look like? (physical features)
3. What do they eat? (food/prey)
4. Who are their friends or enemies?
5. What do they like to do or play

 Crazy Horrible Spelling Test

Flatter
2. Beauracracy
3. accommodation
4. millennium
5. diarrhea

Polyphonic

Write About

      Dad Is In The Garage

      Telling Lies

      Grandmother going to college

      Getting Kyle

      Get Aunt Donna’s book and piggyback now stories to go with then stories

      Kyle’s wooden bed

      Rocky at the Beach with Darren and Kyle

      Story mom tells about Bloody Mary and Captain Cook

      Harry

      Vodka

      Things I remember that …… said

      Looking Back now, I think

      List all of my friends, all the people I know

      Holding on to good ideas in a time of bad ones

      First, do no harm

      Greatest Inventions of mankind

      Write about a recent movie I have seen

Words I Liked

      Mining for Nuggets

      Character is easier kept than recovered

      Fiction makes sense, truth doesn’t

      Sometimes the hardest things in life is knowing which bridges to cross to bear and which to burn

      The breakthrough to the puzzle is relevant and the journey is exhilarating (Einstein, I think)

      The Writing Project is designed to support writing through time, place, theme, into the real purpose of using words for the power of words.

      Entries offered to students into the learning

      The ability to change your mind

      Live with it…fool around with it…

      Showing kids what they already know

      Charts work

      You Get What You Get So Don’t Throw A Fit

      Data Analysis – Ask, What does it mean?

      Take time to reflect, analyze and reset your sight.

      Making a claim – 1. Contestable 2. Complex 3. Compelling 4. Coherent

      Effective conclusions never restate the obvious – 1. Reflective 2. Connect fact to opinion 3. Provide new info to reader 4. Demonstrate new info for the reader.

      Tension – in a paper it is not conflict but is putting two opposing feelings side by side. In film it is called montage

      Good Writing Bubbles to the Surface

      What are you going to say?

      Why are you writing this?

      Are you sucking up the oxygen in my room?

      DELETE bad sentences. Rethink it, restate it.

      Get rid of –ing verbs, passive voice and “was” to be verbs.

      Does the word look right? Ditch it!

      Reading Between the Lines – April 8, 1997. Employ balanced approach between sight and phoneme awareness. Use controlled text.

      Essay is a piece of writing that we listen to, a labyrinth of the writers mind.

      Images need to do some work

      Talk about self and friends – characterization of a mentor

      “Necessity…the Mother of invention” (Plato 427-347 BC)

      Almost everything I like was created because of a want or need, everything that nature hasn’t taken care of.

Ideas To Try and To Think About

      Find a sentence you like best – start the paragraph with the sentence

      Leave the first few lines blank – sources for the proof factor

      Make a plan and prove it.

      Repetition for a purpose – Set up your reader

      Wondrous Words

      My Turn – Newsweek – Articles – Presentation by CeCe (In presentation section)

      Word Study Books
You Are a Writer Books
Memory Monday
Book Tuesday
Work Wednesday (skill, character, facts)
Think Thursday (Answer a question, eg Why do people …)
Freewrite Friday

      Being in the club of writers. Reading like a writer.

      These are things I want to say to my kids

      Writing in math

      I used to do more of this. I want it

      Journal – Think Book – I wonder if I should get more this August. Provide nice hardcover to fill and refill new ones all year.

      Statue of Liberty/Washington Monument – get string and helium balloons and let them see how far up the string goes.

      Tape wingspan on floor and let them measure, lie inside it, etc…

      Count the stairs of the Washington memorial

      DECORATE THINK BOOKS – spend the first whole day

      I am…poems

      Read work backwards to check for spelling

      Read work quickly so you do not read for errors…if you are just reading to see if it is a good paper

      Dialogue that gets work done – not dialogue for dialogue

      Ending a piece of expository text with, looking back on this I think

      Read this set of papers as fast as you can and identify the top paper (use top two papers) Identify why.

      Give kids highlighter to find the place where their actual story begins…lots of times the writers have things that don’t mean anything.

      What are you trying to say?

      Why are you telling me this?

      Teach to cross out the part that is not needed in the paper, cut it out and save it for the next time.

      Good topics – reader can relate, shows emotion, shows tension (a little struggle)

      Write your name if you don’t want to write the assignment

      Spelling – find five words in your writing that you think you misspelled. Write them three different times to identify the word that looks right, circle the one you like best. (activate prior knowledge, look for word chunks, word parts, phonics, visualize, chunk, write it more than one time) Every few weeks go through and choose your hardest word

o   Example – what is harder, flabbergasted or piece (peas, peace, piece) mush harder. Flabbergasted can be sounded out and then bb remembered.

o   Children learn to spell by reading and writing, by the time you are 18 you can spell about 50,000 words. Spelling words only account for 13,536 words…no transfer anyway. Reading like a writer is what makes the difference.

      Highlight your golden line – edit that one sentence – write on a card to share

      Open the day with a quote and citation – Google (Plato website for Quote)

      Publishing – Making Writing Public Ideas: mug designs, magnets, bookmarks (word using textbox), posters (informational), top ten ways to see, posters for Internet Safety, Open House, looping poems, retell a folktale with digital pictures and use dialogue bubbles, storyboard things first. You don’t always get what you want.

      LuLu – $5.00 publishing a small book.

      Buddy with kindergartens

Research and Authors I want to Research

      Read Patty Stock

      Deborah Tannen – studies linguistic patterns

      Writing between the lines and everywhere else, NCTE report

      Linda Gabriel’s – Talk About Books, let kids select

      Teaching the New Writing: Technology, Change, and Assessment in the 21^st-Century Classroom, edited by Anne Herrington, Kevin Hodgson, and Charles Moran. Copyright 2009.

      Challenges for Writing Teachers: Evolving Technologies and Standardized Assessment: Anne Herrington and Charles Moran

Websites to Investigate

·         Really Good Stuff website – Books about American Symbols

·         Math Portfolio book from really good stuff

·         Lii.org (library index search engine)

·         Donorschoose.com – put up your project and what you want to do with it, to get money

·         Brainpop.com

·         http://norcalwp.ning.com/forum

·         http://norcalwp.ning.com/main/authorization/signIn?target=http%3A%2F%2Fnorcalwp.ning.com%2F