Lilly's Standard-based Bulletin Board

The TDRs put up a standard-based bulletin board this week featuring retellings of Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse by Kevin Henkes. It is a culmination of a first grade unit with a goal of discussing and responding across books by a single author.

Each of the retellings begin with an engaging lead, include a retelling with the beginning, middle and end and conclude with a closing. Some of the retellings also include a connection in the opening or the closing. Below is an example of one of the retellings that is posted with the transcription following each page.

Have you ever got in trouble with your teacher? Well if you have you should read Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse by Kevin Henkes.

Lilly loved school but she especially (loved) her new teacher, Mr. Slinger. One day her grandmother bought a new purse that plays music and (had) three quarters and movie star glasses. Isn't that fun?! When Lilly got to school she wanted to share, but her teacher Mr. Slinger told Lilly, "No!" But she kept showing her friends. Mr. Slinger took away Lilly's stuff!! She was sad. She thought. Then she got very mad. She made a mean note to Mr. Slinger that said, "Big fat mean Mr. Slinger." P.S. - When it was the end of the day Mr. Slinger gave back her stuff.

She said, "I don't want to be a teacher when I grow up" and her teacher said, "I like you." On the way home she found a nice note in her purse from Mr. Slinger. She was sad. Lilly felt she was going to cry. She ran home. She didn't watch her favorite movie. She put herself in time out for 1000 years. She counted a long time. After that Lilly felt better. She wrote a story about Mr. Slinger and her Mom made snacks for Mr. Slinger. When she got to school she said, "I am

really, really, really, really sorry." She gave Mr. Slinger the snacks. Everyone forgave Lilly. Then they danced to the music. Everyone ate the snack.

Did you have a blast reading Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse?

Teacher's Commentary: This student produced a detailed retelling of Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse by Kevin Henkes. He asks the reader if he has ever gotten in trouble with a teacher. In doing so he creates an engaging "hook" that pulls the reader into his retelling. He also asks the reader to make a connection between his own life and the book. The retelling includes a beginning, middle and end. The writer provides a closing or "sign off" with the last sentence. The writer provides punctuation and capitalization to express his feelings and reactions of the characters. Quotation marks are used during appropriate dialogue and his spelling is easy to read. He also spells most high frequency words correctly, again fulfilling an important part of the language use and convention standard. Many of the sentences begin with transition words to indicate the direction of the story.

Introducing Lilly

One of Kevin Henkes' most endearing characters is Lilly who appears in several of his mouse books. As a special treat, Debbie Rossignol offered to come read her own special version of one of the Lilly books, Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse. Debbie is a third grade teacher at Chets Creek and has twins in first grade. She read for both of her children's classes - her own unique rendition of the book.

After Debbie finished reading the book, she invited the children to meet Lilly in the form of a live little white mouse. You won't believe what happened next! Debbie dropped the little white mouse and chaos erupted! You'll be glad to know that Debbie dropped the mouse by mistake. I'm not sure who was the most scared - the teachers or the mouse! Thank goodness, Mrs. Ruark did finally rescue the little mouse and we settled him into a rolling ball and a much quieter week with the class. However, there is no doubt that the class will remember this book - and Lilly's visit - for a long time to come!

TLN-PLN as PLC (Professional Learning Communities)

There has been a lot of talk recently about PLNs (Personal Learning Networks). I have been reading and listening, but not really thinking about how much this really has to do with ME. Right after coming off of my year traveling as Florida's Teacher of the Year, I was invited to join a listserve, TLN (Teacher Leadership Network), and they have been my PLN for years. TLN is made up of educators across the country - many are Nationally Board certified, many are former state and national teachers or the year, many are published, many are well-known in the field. They regularly invite new educators to join the group and I have been inspired by their expertise, energy and enthusiasm. TLN has evolved from a listserve to an interactive platform that is collaborative, allowing for conversation, questions, and projects. For several years now they have kept me informed and have pushed my thinking on a regular basis. If I needed to know about almost anything, I could post a question or my thoughts about a series of subjects I am interested in and get in deep, thoughtful responses. As the years have passed, I have felt like some of these educators that I have never met, have become good friends. When the idea that the world is flat became popular, I felt like I knew exactly what they were talking about because of this connectedness.

At the same time that I was growing through TLN, I began sharing an office with Melanie Holtsman, our Instructional Technologist, and Suzanne Shall, our Instructional Coach. Talk about learners! These are teachers who have a thirst for knowledge- who refuse to be satisfied and who are risk-takers. They had become involved with Twitter. I had listened to them for quite some time as they twittered back and forth between friends at school and across the world. Melanie is a Google Certified Teacher, so her network has become even more impressive of late. They have both tried to encourage me to get involved with Twitter, but... on a recent trip when I tweeted "Time for Ed" instead of "Time for bed!" and couldn't take it back (my husband of 39 years is Jim!), I decided that maybe this just wasn't the right medium for me! However, on Friday my thinking changed. I had been working for about a week on merging lots of different e-mails of book recommendations from our County Teachers of the Year. I had also been adding pictures of the book covers. I was in a time crunch. To make a long story short, I had added a recommendation that had corrupted the file. I went to school on Friday and asked if Melanie could help. She tried a few things, but basically said she didn't think it could be recovered. As a last resort, she offered to put it out on Twitter. Within two minutes she had two responses from two different people in other parts of the country describing how to fix the problem! Not that's what I call a PLN. That simple tweet saved me hours and hours of recreating a document!

Dont get me worng - I still LOVE TLN for its thoughtful, in depth discussions of issues that make me think, but I have come to believe that you just can't beat Twitter for a quick, concise response. Maybe I'll just have to visit "Ed" again!

Funding Education

There has been so much in the news recently. Financial institutions, companies and stores that I have known all my life seem to be closing and crumbling at an alarming rate. I see families all over our school who are stressed as a member loses a job or work hours are cut back. Families in all walks of life are worried about how the "doom and gloom" of the economy might trickle down to their own lives. Forced retirements, increased medical expenses, mortgages, lack of credit are all common topics of conversation. I can't but help and wonder how all of this will effect education.

Our own county expects a $150 million deficit for next year. The fluff was the first to go, but there is not enough "excess" left to cover that kind of cut. Guidance (at a time when we may need it the most), Media, Art, Music and PE may be cut! My own husband, a PE teacher, just took and passed the Elementary Education test in preparation for a round of anticipated PE cuts. I can't even imagine schools without music and art and a media specialist to help us navigate the information highway- a school without health and sports... Essential supplies and materials could disappear altogether! We have always joked about having to bring our own toilet paper to school, but maybe it's not a joke after all!

While this crisis is world wide, it seems to hit Florida education especially hard because our state has not always funded education as a top priority. The Lottery, with its promise of education plenty, has merely supplanted funds. It was obvious recently just how short sighted our legislators are with the proposed cuts in National Board supplements (some of which the Governor recently vetoed to restore). Our legislators don't seem to understand the research that supports the strength of candidates who have been Nationally Board certified. They don't seem to get the depth that is needed to actually teach a child to read. We have endured years of underfunding in our state and now we are paying the price. Recently our Superintendent explained that Florida is ranked 50th in the nation for funds allocated and spent on education! 50th! How is it possible that we could have allowed that to happen?!

It is time for us, as educators, to lead the way and use our collective voice to demand that our legislators listen. In all of the rhetoric that we hear among the law makers, we cannot allow our voices to be minimized or silenced. We must advocate for the children in our care. It is our moral and ethical responsibility to the next generation. Whatever we do, it will be our legacy to the future. We cannot just stand here and accept what happens. We must make the public understand that education matters and that in a state where money is already at the bottom of the barrel for education, there simply is no more room for cuts. If it really matters to you, how will you make sure your voice is heard?

Big Chicken: March Book-of-the-Month March 2009

This is a time of the year when we talk about fear and risk and being brave. As teachers and students face our state's high stakes assessment next week, we often do a book-of-the-month that has to do with worrying such as The Worrywarts. This year Principal Susan Phillips introduced Big Chickens authored by Leslie Helakoski and illustrated by one of our favorite artists, Henry Cole. (Henry has been to Chets Creek a couple of times and we are expecting Leslie Helakoski next month!) Beside our Principal loves chickens and it seems that at least once a year, we have a Book-of-the-Month About chickens!

Of course, taking risks and being brave is more than a skill we practice for the high stakes test each year. It is also part of our theme, "Around the World in Technology in 180 Days." This year teachers are taking risks and overcoming any fear they feel about integrating technology into their classrooms. The challenge this month is to use technology as a response to this book of the month and then to post a blog about it! Melanie Holtsman has set up a separate blog for the posts! We have learned about so many different techy tools this year and we are all at different levels of integrating the tools into our classrooms, so this project will provide the ability to differentiate by the breadth of opportunities!

The whole purpose of the books-of-the-month this year is to give us, as teachers, an opportunity to try out technology so that we feel more comfortable with it. It will not become embedded in our daily practice unless we can use it quickly and comfortably. We are, of course, frustrated, as all schools have things that they need that are blocked by our county for our own protection but there is still so much that we can use to make our teaching more visible, more timely, more authentic. How I appreciate the "opportunity" to be pushed to think beyond my comfort zone and to embrace the digital natives that I teach. Stay tuned as this project unfolds in the weeks to come and then is opened up to the world wide web.

Retelling with a Graphic Organizer

As we teach our first graders to retell a story orally and to write a response that includes a retelling, we often use a graphic organizer to help our youngest hold the story in their heads. One of the graphic organizers we use with our Kevin Henkes Author Study is below.
The triangle represents the beginning of the story and includes the characters, setting, and problem. The three rectangles represent the middle and main events in the story and the circle represents the ending solution. This simple structure often helps students recall the entire story and sequence so that they can retell and write the story that they have heard or read.

Below is a sample of the students holding each part of the organizer so that they can talk through the pieces of the story as a class before they "turn and talk" their way through the story with a partner before they individually write their response to literature.

Beginning Kevin Henkes Author Study 2009

First grade teachers have begun their Kevin Henkes Author Study. This is an author study about one of our favorite writers and some of our favorite books. The purpose of the reading lessons are to teach the students to discuss books and to discuss across books. The writing goal is to produce a response to literature piece for the end-of-the-year portfolio. Students first learn to write a connection with a beginning and ending and finally learn to write a complete retelling with a lead and closing using a rubric to meet the response to literature standard.

Below is one of the early responses that includes a test-to-text connection coparing characters with an engaging beginning and a closing. As the unit continues, I will post work from several of the bulletin boards that just went up and final products.

(Lead - Connection - Closing)

One of my favorite stories is Wemberly Worried by Kevin Henkes. It also reminds me of Owen. I have a T-T (text-to-text) connection about when Wemberly and Owen had a special blanket or stuffed animal when they were scared or worried. Owen was worried when his parents wanted to take his blanket and get a new big boy toy, but he loved his blanket. He was going kindergarten, so his mom made a handkerchief for Owen. Now Wemberly, she worried about the tree falling on her house, if there was a snake in the radiators. She worries about if she's the only one who had a spot on her face. Those books Owen and Wemberly are my favorite books out of Kevin Henkes books!