Teaching Young Writers: January 2014

Welcome to the first Chalk-A-Bration of the year!

I had the pleasure of spending time in four different classrooms this week chalking poems. Yeah! How lucky am I? I visited, read poetry and assisted students in writing collaborative poems together in a unique activity. Here is the breakdown of my visits:

With each group I began by reading poetry appropriate to their grade level.

Then students wrote in a small group, a pair or independently, a line of poetry about themselves.

I wrote a title to their poem and students taped their lines to the title.

When we had a finished product, students shared or I shared the poem with the rest of the class.

Here are some samples of the finished poems we created!

Kindergarten--A Classroom Collaboration.

First Grade--A Classroom Collaboration.

Second Grade--Small Group Collaborations

Fourth Grade--Small Group Collaborations

Be sure to check out the chalkers in the comments below! I have blog posts here, there and everywhere today so I may not get back to round them up. Give those classrooms and chalkers some comment love by visiting their link.

Just before the New Year Franki Sibberson at A Year of Reading nominated me for the Sunshine Award. I had literally just read about someone else receiving this award on that same day and was so surprised by the nomination. Thank you Franki, it definitely brought sunshine to me on what was a cold and cloudy day in Michigan! (And now I just found out that Linda Baie nominated me too, from Teacherdance. Now I have to adapt my list of nominees)!

Here's a little info on the Sunshine Award:

This is a way for bloggers to get to know each other and one of the cool things about it is that there are limitless "winners"! The Sunshine award gives others an opportunity to learn more about me as a blogger and then, in turn, I will send sunshine the way of 11 other amazing bloggers for you to get to know! Here are the "official" rules:

Acknowledge the nominating blogger.
Share 11 random facts about yourself.
Answer the 11 questions the nominating blogger has created for you.
List 11 bloggers. They should be bloggers you believe deserve some recognition and a little blogging love!
Post 11 questions for the bloggers you nominate to answer and let all the bloggers know they have been nominated. (You cannot nominate the blogger who nominated you.

Let's Begin!

Here are 11 random facts about me!

I can play trumpet and piano.
I have never been on an airplane.
I got married when I was 19.
I started out as a Music Therapy major, switched to Speech and Language Pathology and then landed on Education.
Both my parents were teachers.
I started blogging in 2010 after a challenge by Stacey Shubitz that she was completely unaware of until recently.
I love camping.
I am more of a writer than a reader. I really need to get better at being an avid reader of all things and not just professional texts.
I never saw myself as a writer until recently.
I started writing poetry in 2011, before then it was sparse if ever.
I love all things art. I wish I had more formal art training but for now I am a self taught mediocre artist.