Perspective and Detail: Teaching Students to Zoom

Today I attended a mini-workshop organized by the Central Utah Writing Project(CUWP). (Some other time I need to write about my experience with CUWP last summer. It was an AMAZING experience!) There were some great ideas for the classroom shared in the three sessions.This information comes from: Shauna Robertson's presentation on Perspective and Detail: Teaching Students to Zoom.
For more information, Shauna can be contacted at shauna.mymail@gmail.com.
First, Shauna began by sharing a book with us called Zoom by Istvan Banyai.

Here is an example of the first few pages:

As you read the book and each page introduces a new perspective, you come to see things differently. Each pictures zooms out from the original picture, giving you an entirely different story.
You can also use a video called Everyday Creativity with Dewitt Jones to illustrate this concept. Jones is a professional photographer and in this video, talks about how beauty can be found not only by zooming in on a particular detail, but also in zooming out for the big picture.
The video is expensive to buy and sometimes difficult to find, but at Jones' website is an introductory video clip that has the exact part of the video that you would need. The website is found at: http://www.dewittjones.com/ Click on 'Watch Dewitt Now'.
We then did the following activity:
Zoom activity
1. Have students write a description of their bedroom. Tell them they will have about 5-7 minutes to write but that is the only instruction they will receive.
Here is my writing:
Fortunately, I just cleaned my room a couple of days ago, so I won't have to describe the dog goobers on the wall or the unmade bed. Instead, I will describe the rustic bedspread patterned with black bears and pine trees, the freshly vacuumed speckled brown carpet, the family portraits hanging (slightly eschew) on the wall. Just recently I re-painted the room, transforming the white walls to a three-tone, earthy palette of sandstone, cream, and off-white. However, I do need to admit that we haven't purchased blinds yet, so currently the windows are accessorized with what I call 'Redneck's Glad`e'.
2. Zoom in. Have students draw a line under what they have written and zoom in closer. Have them picture themselves standing in the middle of the room facing just one wall. Have them extend their writing by describing what they can see from that perspective.
Here is my writing:
The wall is split in two halves by an off-white chair rail. The bottom of the wall is suede (or at least attempted suede), and the top is a cream color. It makes me think of staring really hard at the mid-section of an old cowboy wearing a cream, long-sleeve shirt and worn, leather chaps. On the wall hang two family pictures one with dad and baby, and one with mom and baby. Looking around, you could probably guess that there is one loved baby in the house.
3. Have them draw a line and now zoom in on one object that is on that one wall. Have them write again with a description from this new perspective.
My writing:
A father's day gift-the portrait hangs (slightly crooked) on the wall. A chestnut frame wraps around the collage of two pictures. In one is a picture of my two boys-my husband, looking dignified and handsome in his black suit and red tie, holding my three month-old, also looking adorable and handsome in his pin-stripe vest, green shirt, and tie. My son is a miniature version of his father with twinkling eyes and that same mischievous smile.

Discuss with students how their writing changed as they changed their perspective. Also discuss what things stayed the same. You could also discuss when being aware of your reader and his/her perspective and when it is good to get closer and examine details in writing and when it is better to step back and see the big picture.
Some of my thoughts after doing this activity:
It was interesting to see how my focus changed from each perspective. In the first writing, I was really just thinking about how messy my room is typically. In the second writing, I was focusing on imagery and how I wanted my walls to look western and rugged when I painted them. In the third writing, I was focused on my family and my love for them. I think that this would be a great activity for generating ideas, for writing a memoir, and for examining writer's craft.
When I used to teach my students Ideas and Content and, more specifically, having a main idea and then blowing it up with detail, I used a Where's Waldo picture. I would put the picture on an overhead and tell the students to write about what they see. After writing for a few minutes, we would discuss how difficult (and boring) it was to write about everything. Then I would put a paper with a small hole cut-out over the picture and again tell them to write about it. Maybe they would only be able to see a dog riding a bike and juggling. They could then expand on that image and come up with creative scenarios. We would then discuss how when we write about something, we don't want to write everything. We want to find what is most important and really focus on bringing that to life in our writing using sensory details.
I always liked having my students write a memoir at the beginning of the school year. I liked that I could read these memoirs and get to know my students a little better, and I liked that writing about one's self and examining one's life is something most of them will use through out their lives. However, many times their memoirs were so boring! Often, I received 'What I did over summer vacation' and travel logs. I often gave them the quote about how the reader doesn't want to hear about every ride in Disneyland but if one the rides broke down or someone got sick on one of the rides, that is worth hearing about. But some of them still never got it. I think this zooming in and zooming out activity could really help students figure out what they really want to write about. What made that memory stand out in their minds? What made it memorable and worth writing about?
You could also use this activity for further discussions about writer's craft. For example, I don't like the book Eragon very much. I know, I know, there are probably Eragonites hunting me down right now for saying such a thing. The story was fine but there was too much detail. I remember one scene where the characters were about to enter a room through a door. I swear there were two or three pages just describing the door, and the whole time I was shouting in my head, "Just walk through that door, for crying out loud!" I felt like the plot got bogged down in details. Another example might be the unabridged version of Les Miserables. A chapter on the sewer system? Really?
But there are times when the reader needs the details. I want to be sitting at that campfire with the characters. I want to feel its heat and hear the crackle and snap of the wood burning. I want to choke a little on the smoke and have to move to the side to get away from it. But only if it that scene is important enough that I be there with the characters. I think of really good scary stories. Many times, a scary story won't give you all the details of the 'monster'. The writer knows that we all have monsters in our minds and that the details the reader will supply from his/her own imagination is far scarier than anything you could describe as a writer. This is where many of the gore movies go wrong in trying to produce horror--too many (often cheesy) details.
Another great resource that Shauna mentioned was: Image Grammar: Using Grammatical Structures to Teach Writing by Harry Noden. You can also find some good teaching strategies at the companion website: http://www3.uakron.edu/noden/.


So many great ideas and possible discussions generated from this one activity. Thanks, Shauna!

Becoming Mechanically Inclined: Using Mentor Text and Sentence Stalking to Teach Grammar and Mechanics

Today I attended a mini-workshop organized by the Central Utah Writing Project(CUWP). (Some other time I need to write about my experience with CUWP last summer. It was an AMAZING experience!) There were some great ideas for the classroom shared in the three sessions.This information comes from: Adrienne Warren-Becoming Mechanically Inclined: Using Mentor Text and Sentence Stalking to Teach Grammar and Mechanics in Middle School.

For more information, Adrienne can be contacted at: adrienne.warren@wasatch.edu

Much of her presentation was based on ideas from Mechanically Inclined-Building Grammar, Usage, and Style into Writer's Workshop by Jeff Anderson.

First we did a little writing. Adrienne read to us the children's book, When I was Little by Jamie Lee Curtis.

The writing prompt was: When I was little...

Here's my writing:

When I was little, life was grand. Swing sets were space ships. The haystack was Mt. Everest. Flowers and weeds could be mushed together with mud to create a witch's brew. Cats were spys. Dogs were aliens. I was bursting at the seams of my imagination, going through dreams as quickly as I was clothes. I wanted to be everything. A doctor, a meteorologist, an astronaut, a rock star, a cartoon...it didn't matter what, I could be anything! Now, I'm mostly still the same, I just don't say it aloud as much.

Then Adrienne talked about how we can enhance grammar instruction in the classroom by helping students to become sentence stalkers (or sentence detectives). We need to encourage students to search for well-written sentences in their reading and in their own writing. One idea was to have a sentence of the day/week posted in the classroom. As teachers, we need to also constantly expose students to good writing, especially from their own writing. Sometimes we show students lots of bad examples but neglect to point out the really good ones! However, Adrienne mentioned that we need to also show them bad examples here and there and work with them to correct the mistakes (in my mind this does NOT mean correcting grammar mistakes each day as a class starter; it is so much more and so much better than that!). One idea is to have students look for grammar mistakes in the world around them (unfortunately, grammar mistakes are all around us). Teach them to be grammar police!

A resource for this could be The Great Typo Hunt: Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time by Jeff Deck and Benjamin D. Herson. I'm excited to check out this book. I had never heard of it until this workshop. Apparently, these two guys travel around the U.S. and fix grammar and typo mistakes.

Here are a couple examples from the book:

We also need to teach students an understanding of basic grammar rules. They don't need to know the fancy terminology necessarily, just how to use grammar to improve their writing.
Some more great resources for this are:
Eats, Shoots & Leaves-Why Commas Really Do Make a Difference!

The Girl's like Spaghetti

Twenty-Odd Ducks-Why, Every Punctuation Mark Counts!

All books are by Lynne Truss, another grammar guru.

First, students need to understand the basic sentence structure by identifying the basic component of every sentence: the subject and the verb. Who or what is doing something: subject. What is being done is the verb.
We did an activity called Sentence Smack Down to practice this. Students get in groups and in the groups, each student shares one sentence. The group then writes down the subject and verb of the sentence on two sticky notes. On the wall, hang up a poster with a T-chart with the labels 'subject' and 'verb'. The group then comes up, reads the sentence, smacks down the subject and verb, and reads the sentence again.
I think I would make this a little more competitive to make it more interesting for my middle school students. I would break the class into two groups and have two students from each group come up and be ready with a pencil and a sticky note. I would then read the sentence and the first group to write down the subject and verb and get both smacked down onto the paper would get points.

We then looked at sentence stalking and the four basic comma patterns.
Show the students the patterns and have them look in their reading and in their writing for these patterns.
Pattern #1 Opener, sentence (I would just call it Opener):
If nagging were an Olympic sport, my Aunt Buhlah would have a gold medal. (My Big Fat Greek Wedding).
Pattern #2 Sent, interrupter, ence (I would call it Interrupter):
Then there's Johanna Mason, the only living female victor from 7, who won a few years back by pretending she was a weakling. (Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins).
Pattern #3 Sent, e, n, c, e (I would call it Lister):
I wanted to be everything-a doctor, a meteorologist, an astronaut, a rock star, a cartoon...it didn't matter what. (My sentence from my earlier writing).
Pattern #4 Sentence, closer (I would call it Closer):
The boy watched the stone, counting the skips. (Walk Two Moons, Sharon Creech).
You could possibly do grammar scavenger hunts, assigning students to search for specific grammar patterns. "Today in your reading I want you to look for Listers..."
Great ideas! Thanks, Adrienne!

Inspiration

This is from: http://joeaveragewriter.blogspot.com/
You should check out this blog. Joe is a great teacher and a great writer. I loved his words in describing the beginning of school and why so many of us love teaching at the junior-high level. Thanks, Joe, for finding just the right words!
Here it goes:

The beginning of a new school year is looming. And this year it feels as if summer was just getting underway when I happened to glance over my shoulder and spy a junior-high ninja assassin just before I am struck in the back by a katana, throwing star, or even worse—a rubber chicken. Yeah, it’s sudden, quick, and mostly painless.
Actually, as I have started new ventures and met new people in different endeavors, I’ve had to introduce myself on several occasions. Most gasp or cluck their tongues when I say that I teach junior high English. The subtle ones slightly suck in their breath or barely shake their heads as if paying homage at a viewing.

So I’ve been thinking: is it really that bad?

Think about it, I get to spend my time with hundreds of smelly, pubescent geeks who are all trying to be cooler than the doofus next to him. I don’t have to mention the drama of twelve to fifteen year old girls who compare every guy schlepping down the hall to ice-cold effeminate vampires or abnormally abbed werewolves. The mustiness of Scout camp funk mixed with a cornucopia body lotion scents creates a musk that puts the zoo to shame.

Now I get to take these self-absorbed entities whose main concerns are texting, sleeping, eating, and __________. Insert any hobby here, except Pokémon cards because we’re in junior high now, people; it’s just not cool any more. (Don’t worry; I won’t tell anyone that Jigglypuff and Bulbasaur are still your favorites.)…and I get to teach them Language Arts. Most would rather go to the dentist…

Or so they say. Most kids, and adults for that matter, find pleasure in story whether reading (including being read to), writing, or more informally, gossiping. Story is what makes our lives complete. We communicate our lives in story, and usually it improves with each retelling, right? Think about your glory stories. How big was that catch? How pretty was she? How many defenders did you evade? How fast were you going? Now be honest with yourself. Truth and fiction blur. And when we get to analyze the intricacies of language, the essence of communication, the reason for being a human being, we find elements of nature (human or otherwise) where we can make connections and form lifelong bonds with friends (real or fictional) and texts (informational or fictional) and universal truths (which are seldom fictional).

Oh, yes. I get to help these little darlings identify these themes in literature and in their lives, turn them into my army of zombies for a short period of time, and send them forth to take over the world by first taking control of their own universes and then learning how to influence the spheres of those around them. Yep. That’s what I get to do.

Openly the students moan and complain - they gripe just because they want to be heard or to fit in – but covertly they like it. It’s just like taking medicine. You know it’s good for you and it’ll make you better. No one is supposed to enjoy gagging down that nasty thick goo. But secretly, you know you crave that over-sweet cherry cough-syrupy taste. For some, amoxicillin (the fruity pink stuff for ear infections) almost becomes an addiction. But we still grumble about having to swallow it.

Students see the truth in learning, and in literacy; and even though some may struggle with reading or writing complete sentences, they crave it. They come back for more willingly, even though they pretend to be more interested in the new girl in the next row.

They have urges, some of which I won’t discuss, but one that I will ramble on for a little longer is their primal desire to create and share. Most of the time it comes slowly, but I get to be there to witness, to help, to clean up the ashes when they “accidently” drop some weird chemical compound they found growing in their lockers. In short, I witness growth. I get to see them become.

So, about my job? Is it really that bad? You may have hated junior high. I know I’ve tried blocking some of the more painful moments from my own past. But it’s these growing pains that make us who we are.

They may sting for a moment, or a decade, but they shape us. I get to help kids shape themselves.

Is it really that bad? That junior high thing? No.

I love my job!