Minutes by Kaitlin
We shuffle into the room a little later and quieter than usual, which might have something to do with it being Monday morning, or that it’s the start of the last week of Sun Belt. Luckily, there’s coffee and donuts waiting from us, along with delicious quiche, courtesy of Alyson. We begin the day by going over our new schedule for the week, that shows that, yes, everyone will have to give their TIW at some point. It’s hard to believe that there’s only a week left!
Our morning writing is brought to us by the letter “D.” Deana reads the picture book Dinorella: A Prehistoric Fairy Tale by Pamela Duncan Edwards, which is a great example of alliteration. Whether it’s because we’re fueled by sugar and caffeine, or due to the long list of deadlines on the board, we seem to be more productive this morning than others. All you can hear is the gentle swell of music and the continuous clicking of keyboard keys. I, a procrastinator to the end, finally decide on and type up my TIW. I’m so focused on my writing I don’t even notice that our bombastic buddy from next door is auspiciously absent (there’s my attempt at alliteration).
When we return from our break, Melinda gives us her TIW on how to create effective writing practices that will help standardized test scores. She begins by quoting some scary graduation statistics, and reminding us that even though “standardized tests” are dirty words for most teachers, they’re a reality that we’re going to have to deal with for the foreseeable future. We did a “graffiti wall” exercise to illustrate the research about effective writing programs. My group didn’t really understand the concept of “wall,” and created a complicated 3-D model of a toolbox and a table that really didn’t hang so well from the wall. Whitney’s group offered us two good illustrations of how the standardized testing takes a very narrow view of writing, especially the “th (ink) ing” graphic. All in all, the discussion gave us some important things to think about when designing writing instruction.
We had a brown bag lunch with Edna Brabham, who talked to us about teaching vocabulary and literacy in general. I loved her idea of getting rid of vocabulary lists and wordbanks and introducing a “language gestault.”
In the afternoon we had Shay’s TIW, “How do we teach students to incorporate events into a narrative writing piece?” Even though she is a self-proclaimed formulaic writing teacher, she walked us through a lesson that asks students to be creative in writing a re-telling of a fairy tale. She read us two great examples of re-imaginations and continuations of fairy tales, Falling for Rapunzel and The Frog Prince, Continued, and then (very) quickly walked us through how she approaches the narrative assignment in her classroom. Our assignment was to re-imagine or continue a fairy tale, and we may have exceeded expectations. When asked to share, we had everything from Lilian’s beautiful original fairy tale to Donna’s depressing, real-world end to Jack and the Beanstalk. Someone should publish Ash’s hilarious continuation of Snow White in the economic depression that has the seven dwarves moving into the garage above the Prince’s house, Snow White working in a button factory to make ends meet, and a tawdry affair between Snow White and Bashful, who, it turns out, is not so bashful.
We ended the day with some quiet reading and study time, which again had most of us frantically working to meet deadlines. We closed with Alyson sharing a connection between images and ideas, and Sara reading us her own ruminations on the idea of “home.” Great thoughts to have running through my head as I make the hour-long drive to a place that I still can’t bring myself to call home, even after living there for over a year.
