Sunday, May 17, 2009

Pictures from D.C.

Picasa Web Albums - Linnea - Brent & Katie's wedding May 2009

Since it's been a long time...






Anyone who knows me would testify of my distractability: I'm always busy trying to get things done, but in the middle of doing one thing, I find something else that needs done and start it, etc., etc. If I'm really lucky, most of it is finished by the end of the day. Ha! See--just now I remembered I needed to sell one of Jason's textbooks on Amazon, so I opened up a new tab and went to Amazon.com before realizing that is exactly what I'm talking about. I am so ADD. This is why I have a million tabs open at any given time on my computer. It drives Jason crazy.

Anyway, where I was going with that is to simply say I started writing in my journal daily again, but it got a little monotonous this week, so I stopped and am back to writing online. Hmm.

The pictures up there are of when Jason and I flew out to D.C. for my little brother's wedding. They're way up there and don't have captions because I have no idea how to do it. This blog thing is way different than Word. The top picture is of Brenton and Katie. They were sealed in the D.C. temple on May 1st. It was beautiful. Below that is my aunt, out foreign exchange sister Jessi, and my cousin Rachel. Under that is my brother and I.

The D.C. temple is gorgeous. It sits in the middle of a forest and is surrounded by azaleas and dogwoods. I could have wandered the grounds for hours if it weren't for my high heels. I love springtime in the East. It was wonderful to see my family, too. It had been almost a year! Married life monopolizes your money and minimizes trips home.

Giselle graduated high school today and will go to BYU this fall, so I'll have a little sister down there to visit. Brenton and Katie will be going to school there too again. In January Garrett comes home from his mission and also goes to BYU, so I'm going to get to make several trips to see my brothers and sisters. I can't wait!

Jason and I are searching for an affordable-but-nice apartment to move into next month. I got a job teaching first grade in Rigby, and he'll be working in Idaho Falls, so we need someplace more middle ground than Rexburg. I've spent HOURS scanning the classifieds and craigslist for potential apartments and calling for information asking the same few questions. Does it have a dishwasher? Washer and dryer hook-ups? New or old apartment? Etc. Today I talked to a guy about an apartment in IF whom I've apparently already spoken with, because he said, "Oh, you're the one who has to have the dishwasher. You could wash them by hand, you know." Irr. Yes, I have been for a year, and I'm sick of it. Call me spoiled, but I would like a dishwasher, please.

It's late and I'm rambling and I really don't care, because as far as I know, no one reads this blog (and if you do you should tell me so I write more coherently next time).

Monday, February 2, 2009

Blue Ribbon Writing

When Christmas break started I asked Sister Morgan for a list of books I should read. She said 1) A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (which I'd already read a few months ago) and 2) All the Newberry Medal books. And so I began. So far, I've read the following (including a few Newberry Honor books too):

-Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata
-Crispin: The Cross of Lead by Avi
-The Midwife's Apprentice by Karen Cushman
-Holes by javascript:void(0)Louis Sachar
-Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech
-The Giver by Lois Lowry
-Homesick: My Own Story by Jean Fritz
-The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
-Summer of the Swans by Betsy Byars
-A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
-A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L'Engle
-The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare
-The Wheel on the School by Meindert DeJong
-Surviving the Applewhites by Stephanie S. Tolan
-Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine
-Hitty, Her First Hundred Years by Rachel Field (just started this today)

It's been wonderful to just sit down and read for a few minutes or an hour in the evenings. And having the goal to read all those Newberry books makes me rush across the street to the library as soon as I finish the last one in the pile to get another stack. Luckily they're all marked in the library with a sticker on the spine. They are all very well-written. A few of them remind me of novel-length personal essays. Jean Fritz's Homesick was like that. She even wrote at the front of her story that she'd taken all of her experiences as a girl in China and used them to recreate the flow of her childhood. She said she made up the dialogue and reordered events, but she didn't apologize for it. That's creative non-fiction--a genre of its own rising in popularity, according to Sister Morgan. She liked my essay about Nana and Tata's house. That was easy to write. I'll write some more about that. I'll post the essay on here so you can read it.

Maybe if I spent half as much time writing as I have been reading, my writing would improve enough to create my own book someday. The problem with that is I don't know where to begin, so I don't. Third graders don't usually have that problem. Their imagination sweeps them across the page and creates stories I'd never dream up. Who would have ever put elbow pads and a skateboard on a newly hatched dragon, anyway? That image sure stayed in my mind. I just don't write. It's easier that way. I sure miss the Writing Center. On slow days I could sit at the computer and write for hours and not feel like it was a waste of time.

Anyway, I'm back to reading as much as I did when I was a kid. What's extra nice is that my husband sits right next to me with his nose in Louis L'amour books.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Third Grade Writing Center

I'm student teaching in a third grade class this semester, and while most of my lessons are scripted and quite boring, I do get to teach writing every once in awhile! Apparently most teachers don't like doing it, so they don't. That drives me crazy. Well, these kids got a three day writing workshop "Writing Center Style" last week, and they loved it.

The first day we brainstormed details they could potentially use for their dragon stories (their reading theme this week). One boy said his dragon ate meat. I asked what KIND of meat? All the students added onto that description right down the abstraction ladder: meat to water animals to frogs to fire-bellied toads! It was so much fun. I felt right at home, and they couldn't wait to share their ideas. After that I let them loose to finish their brainstorming and plan the beginning, middle, and end of their own stories. They finished quickly and began writing. They wrote with zero disruptions for 30 minutes! I was so excited to get their two and three and four page drafts. We have a boy with Asberger's, and he HATES writing (in general). Every time he has an assignment that requires writing very much, he asks for help and often throws fits because he can't write fast and doesn't like to do it. While we were writing their dragon stories, however, my cooperating teacher and I didn't even know he was there. He didn't say a word the whole three days and turned in a great story. I conferenced with most students as they wrote, then I read everyone's drafts and made comments on them WC style. I asked everyone at least one question that involved adding more detail for the reader. I didn't comment on anything grammatical. Their spelling was extremely creative. Reading it was like playing Mad Gab, the game where you have to say a string of words in various ways to try and figure out what phrase it sounds like. I remember someone spelled "excellent" "eggscalent." All of their dragons were quite original. There were beat-boxing dragons, ballerina dragons, and even Japanese Samurai dragons.
The second day we discussed revision. I taught them how it means to "re-see" what you write and that our motto is Revise, Revise, Revise. We'll get it in them early. :) A volunteer student helped me model our partner revisions in front of the class. He read his paper aloud, and I asked a couple of questions and told him what image I remembered the most from it (One of the questions on their revision questionnaire was what picture comes back into their mind when they think about their partner's story.) Everyone clapped for him afterward. He was very proud of his story. Everyone divided into partners and read each other their stories, then they returned to their seats and made revisions. They did a better job than the fifth graders did last semester. That could be because we modeled exactly what to do, but I was pleased with them. The only thing that did NOT work was editing. I had no idea what to do for that, or if it was even important at this level. I didn't want to write all over their paper. This is their first experience with writing, and I want them to feel successful at it. I finally decided to have them circle three or four words they thought they'd misspelled. We teachers ran around to all of the students and wrote the correct spelling above their circled words, and then they got to start their final drafts on Day 3. They couldn't wait to "publish" their stories, so I made lined paper in the shape of a "dragon egg" and printed it on colored paper. They wrote in their best handwriting. They look great!

Also, one student told me the first day that he couldn’t think of what to write and didn’t like writing. He likes math a lot better. We talked about some ideas that went along with what he had so far and came up with a cute scenario of him and his dragon eating at McDonald's. They had a contest for who could eat the most, and his dragon ate 200 Big Macs and definitely won. That got him excited. Since that couldn’t be the beginning of his story very easily, I suggested his start in the middle and then fill in the beginning and end later. He did it! He got the middle written—like six lines or so right in the middle of his paper. I talked to him before we ended writing time, and he was back to feeling down about it. He’s such a sweetheart. I told him that he would need to work on it at home so it would be finished by the next day. He said he wouldn’t have time that night, but I convinced him he’d find time at daycare. He started coming up with other times he could do it too. The next day he came with a very full page of his completed story! I was impressed that somehow his beginning and end fit right above and below his middle and flowed seamlessly into each other. I told him how much I enjoyed reading it and why I liked it, and he said he spent two hours the night before trying to come up with what to write. At the end of the day after we peer revised I mentioned again that I was pleased with his work, and he said shyly, “You know, this writing thing might not be so bad after all. I guess I kinda like it.” That made my day!

So this is my dream job: teaching children writing. If anyone has heard of such a thing, let me know.