Writing poetry
Kapka Morning Gathering and Literacy | 11/18/2008 | 2.0 hours field work | Present: Kapka students, teachers and myself
Background
This morning I attended Kapka's morning gathering and literacy block. The morning gathering is a meeting in which students, teachers, parents and visitors gather to greet each other and get the day going. In the literacy block, the elders (first graders) and elder elders (second graders) worked on the poems they are writing for the families they will be taking Thanksgiving dinner to.
Key Observations and Methods
Gathering
The gathering meeting had the following components —
Song: The group sang a song to settle into the meeting and then one student picked the song they would sing as a group.
Greeting: A student picked the greeting gesture for the morning. Each person greeted their neighbor with the greeting, acknowledging their presence and connecting with them.
Count-off: Call this a cool and easy way to do counting. The students counted off so everyone knew how many were present. What was even more touching was that they made note of who was not present and so remembered them in the gathering.
Teacher Announcements: Teachers got to make announcements.
Since I was present to mainly observe literacy work, I kept looking for how the gathering also connected to literacy. It occurred to me that the gathering was a powerful way for students to learn to connect and communicate in a large group setting. We often overlook the power and importance of in-person, verbal and non-verbal communication as a key learning component of literacy. It is said that over 80% of what we convey is through body language and in-person presence and language as opposed to just words read or written. The gathering seems to provide students for a meaningful way to communicate in a group, learning to take turns, respecting the need for others to think when they are to speak, listening with respect and care. One of the teachers reiterated the 5 things one needs to listen — eyes on the speaker, voices off, ears open, brain on and space around yourself so you may not be distracted. I appreciated the little tips and ways in which the group space was held and students helped follow the needs of decorum. I cannot completely state all the subtle and powerful communication skills they are learning in the process but I know they are many.
I was struck by how the gathering was conducted by a combination of teacher input and student leadership. While one teacher helped maintain decorum, a student led the group through the various sections of the gathering. Other students played a key role in each section with one of them picking the song to be sung this morning, another picking the greeting gesture and so on. It was heart-warming to see 5, 6 and 7 year olds take on leadership roles and not being shy in leading a whole group through activities.
Literacy
In the literacy block, the 6 and 7 year olds worked on the poems they started writing yesterday for the families who they will take Thanksgiving dinner to. To begin with, the teacher introduced some ideas based on their work from the previous days. Here are my main observations from her work:
She refreshed the group's memory on the differences between stories and poems. She read off a list of differences they had identified as a group. I appreciated how this made poem writing seem simple and easy — a poem being a story that is organized and written a certain way.
She then pointed out something she had observed from their discussion the previous day — that a poem is laid out a certain way on a page. She illustrated this through a simple poem on Football that consisted of three sentences that could easily be considered prose but that when laid out a certain way on the page made them come together as a lovely poem. She walked through the example slowly and carefully seeking student input on what made the words and sentences into a poem. The use of the example was brilliant. That it was a poem written by a first grader made it even more meaningful. She engaged with the students and respected their input in such a way that she could not get them to stop thinking about how those simple words came alive into a poem.
She then shared with the group other examples; poems written by their classmates and others from the earlier year. She showed various layouts of poems and uses of words, words that stood by themselves on a line to lay emphasis on them. The use of examples that were close to home must have made this exercise more dear, meaningful and easier for the students.
With the examples shown it was time to release the little poets to their own writing. Before she did this, she showed them the Football poem in the students own writing pointing out that it was not refined, that there were spelling errors and that, that was exactly how it was meant to be because writing a poem is about getting your ideas about ordinary life down in interesting descriptive ways. It is not about writing it all out correctly. She emphasized this last point so those who felt the pressure to write correctly would be released from it.
Then, the students worked on their poems. The teachers made themselves available for questions. One of the teachers held a writing conference with a student. The student was writing about pumpkins. So, the teacher brought a pumpkin over and they looked at it and talked about it, with the teacher helping the student make note of what she wanted to say about the pumpkin. With some of the main ideas down on paper, she sent the student her way to work on it some more.
Last, the group gathered and the teacher shared her observations of the students' work. She called out all those things that had worked well, showing examples of the work produced by the students, including how some had moved on to do their best guess spelling and how well it had worked. She also pointed out the difficulties that some had and how this was natural and all a part of writing. She used examples of students who had grown since a year ago, giving hope to those who were struggling this year.
The use of examples to illustrate all of the key messages was powerful for this particular exercise. I also appreciated the many ways in which the same example of the Football poem was used — to illustrate what makes a poem a poem and also how when a poem is first written it doesn't need to be correct. The use of examples to reflect on the learning exercise was also meaningful, making the learning more real.