Creative Writing 101: Object Personification

This lesson was inspired by a piece of writing one of the students in my writing club shared with me. She write a monologue from the point of view of an inanimate object. I won't tell you what yet, I'll let you figure it out.

Title: Through The Eyes Of The Barrel

Before you pick me up, think about your life. Think about the time you’ll serve. The many people you’ll kill. You think I want to be this fearful thing people see. You say you’re my friend, but when you hear the sirens you just ditch me somewhere. You don’t care where you throw me on the ground. You just leave me in the cold with scratches on my handle. I have feelings you know? When I lock up, it’s only because I’m nervous, but you get so frustrated at me. And when I don’t clean up my mess you end up in deeper trouble, not even knowing it. It’s only because I care. I figure you have to change at some point. But you go out and do the same thing. You don’t even feel my pain. You just think you’re down and cool. You’ll never understand. So you’re going to pick me up anyway? Did you not hear me? Go ‘head pull me and see another go.

After reading her piece, I thought it would make a great mentor text for a piece for my creative writing class while reinforcing the concept of personification. I asked students to consider what the object being described might be, which of its "real" characteristics were included in the piece, and how the object was personified.

After a quick review of the above questions, I encouraged students to select their own objects. I asked them to choose something different from the topic in the mentor text (of course at least one student chooses the same topic) and provided an extensive list of choices if students couldn't come up with their own.

Before writing, students created a quick web of their chosen object's characteristics. Students hand wrote a rough draft and then typed it up so I could make suggestions about revisions using Google Drive. I was impressed by their creativity and the humor many brought into their writing.

Samples:

I am a unique object that is carved to only fit yours specifically. Without one you won't be granted; no entry. I am convenient for late nights. Also I am used to start cars and motorcycles. If you lose me, you might get in trouble by your mother. I could be used to open a safe that you own. I am an item that is very important to your life believe it or not. Basically I am your access to a lot of different things.

So you think that you can just go around and do anything you want to do to me? You have your friends sitting on me like I'm crap or something. Then they just drop their money in me. When you're upset you will cut me, and when you see me getting old then you will just throw me out like I'm nothing and will get a new one.

I found that quick one to two day lessons like this one worked best with my creative writing class; they capture students' attention and don't last long enough to lose it.

Answers: gun, key, couch.

For this and other creative writing activities, check out this engaging, common core aligned resource.

You Oughta Know About...NSRF's Protocols & Activities

Tired of doing jigsaws with your students and asking them to think-pair-share? Looking for some new ideas, but don't want to spend time endlessly searching the Internet? Then you oughta know about...the National School Reform Faculty (NSRF) and their activities and protocols.

Comprehensive doesn't even begin to describe NSRF's A-Z listing. There are over 40 activities/protocols just under the letter "C."  While there is no way I can introduce you to all of them in this blog post, I will you give you five ideas about how to utilize these activities/protocols and a few of my favorites. Some activities/protocols are for use with students, some are for use with teachers and other staff members, but most could be used with either group and any age/grade range.

Use #1 - Team Building
Whether it is the start of the school year, a new club or group is forming, or you just need to get your students up and moving, having a repertoire of team building activities is helpful. Especially as your students get older and everyone has done "the knot," you want to have fresh ideas to get your students thinking creatively. Team building activities help to build community in the classroom, allow students to get to know each other or become more comfortable with each other, and provide opportunities to practice leadership and communication skills.

I prefer ones like the Blind Count, which students have to complete silently. In this activity, a group of 7-12 people who are blindfolded must get in sequential order without talking after each person is given a specific number that they are to represent.

Use #2 - Professional Development
We have all slept sat through lackluster professional development (PD), hours of being talked at with no chance to share any input or process information through discussion. Next time you are up as the presenter consider selecting one of these activities, such as Affinity Mapping, to engage your audience.

In Affinity Mapping begin with an open-ended question related to your PD topic, i.e. How do reading deficiencies affect students in the classroom? or What skills should students have mastered by the time of graduation? Group members first write responses on Post-it Notes, one idea per Post-it. Then group members silently post their responses onto chart paper and arrange their responses into categories. At this point, group members can converse and create labels for each of their categories. Finally, groups will share out, noting themes between groups.

Use #3 - Group Discussions
Sometimes getting your students to talk is like pulling teeth. You know they have plenty to say. They talk in the halls, at lunch, when you are trying to start class, but when you ask them to discuss a text, silence. I find the most success with highly structured discussions like the Final Word.

This discussion format can be used with an article, a novel, a chapter in a textbook, a children's book, a poem, etc. Break you students into equal size groups. Each group member underlines (or writes down) a quotation from the text. It's a good idea to ask them to pick a back-up quote in case their first choice is taken. A group member begins by sharing his/her quote and the reason(s) for selecting it. Why does s/he agree/disagree with the quote? What questions does s/he have about that quote? What issues does it raise for him or her? What does s/he now wonder about in relation to that quote? Then, going around in a circle, group members share responses to the quote. They can expand on the presenter’s thinking and the issues raised for him/her by the quote, provide a different look at the quote, or question the presenter’s assumptions about the quote and the issues raised. After each group member has responded, the presenter gets the "final word." What is s/he thinking now? What is his or her reaction to what s/he has heard?

Use #4 - Interacting With Text
Annotation may seem like a buzz word these days, but students need to be interacting with texts to create meaning. All too often, I ask a student a question about a short text and his/response is, "uhhh, I have to look back for that." If students are reading without purpose, they may be reading, but nothing is sticking with them. Just using a simple technique, like the Text Rendering Experience can help resolve this issue.

Using a short fiction or nonfiction piece, ask students to read and mark the sentence, the phrase, and the word that they think is particularly important. Now students have a purpose. As they are reading and rereading, they are hunting for the best sentence, phrase, and word (I don't know why something like this becomes competitive, but trust me, you will hear groans when another student "steals" their sentence, phrase, or word). There are three rounds of sharing out once students have finished reading and marking the text. In the first round, each person shares a sentence from the document that he/she thinks/feels is particularly significant. In the second round, each person shares a phrase that he/she thinks/feels is particularly significant and a scribe records each phrase. In the third round, each person shares the word that he/she thinks/feels is particularly significant and a scribe records each word. Finally the group discusses what they heard and what insights might be gained from the words that emerged.

Use #5 - Writing Prompts 
Engaging writing prompts can be used to begin or close a lesson, as an activity of choice for early finishers, as a transition between lessons, or as part of a creative writing unit or course.

Presenting students with unusual information or inspiring quotations is a great way to spark ideas. Post the description of a Village of 100 People or one of these Quotes for Closings and allow your students to reflect in writing. Are your students surprised to learn that if the world was a village of 100 people, 70 of them would be unable to read? What do they think Ralph Waldo Emerson meant when he said, "Nothing can bring you peace but yourself?"

Some of NSRF's activities/protocols require you to log-in (after registering and creating an account), but the majority are accessible without doing so. To keep myself and my new found ideas organized, I am thinking of creating digital folders based on the five uses above and saving my favorites for quick, easy access. I also have this bookmarked so it is just a click away when I need it.

Take some time to look through some of NSRF's activities/protocols and after you check it out, feel free to comment below with your favorites!

Creative Writing 101: Scary Story Mini-Books

In mid-October, about six weeks into the school year, I found out I was being assigned an additional class (the reasons why are complicated, so we will skip that part). A week or two later I found out that the class I would be assigned would be a creative writing elective. To say I was less than thrilled was an extreme understatement.

Two months into the school year I would be teaching an elective class that the students in it did not elect to take, and most of whom would be turned off by the mere mention of the word writing, let alone a course with writing in its name.

The students in the class would be a mix of 10th-12th graders, some of whom I taught previously, so I couldn't repeat any creative writing assignments I might have slipped into my regular English classes in the past. Sigh.

I was even less thrilled when the resources I was given for teaching the class included a grammar textbook and a handbook to writing a research paper. Seriously?!


Since the class started right before Halloween, the first assignment I came up with was creating scary story mini-books. A hands-on activity with minimal writing, and what kid doesn't love scary stories?

I used a plot diagram to help students plan their stories.

Then I taught them how to make mini-books from a single sheet of paper. You can see step by step directions in this previous post.

Then I gave them plenty of time to plan, write, and illustrate. While not the most rigorous first assignment, it was fun and helped me get to know my students a little better.

You can use mini-books in a variety of more rigorous ways in your own classroom:

1. Challenge students to retell and illustrate a short story, novel, or play in just 6 pages (8 with front and back cover). Word choice will really be important in a limited amount of space, and students won't be able to go on and on and on as sometimes they do when summarizing plot.

2. Similarly, ask students to summarize a nonfiction text, pulling out just the 6 most important points.

3. Create an illustrated glossary of terms as part of note taking or to review for a quiz or test.

4. Write a prequel or sequel to a fiction piece. 

5. Write a children's book on a nonfiction topic synthesizing information from several sources.

For this and other creative writing activities, check out this engaging, common core aligned resource.

Common Core Writing: Assessing Student Writing

This is number nine in a series of posts about my online course, Common Core: Implementing the Writing Standards. If you are looking to get caught up, check out:

Post #1: an overview of the writing standards
Post #2: the gradual release process and writing
Post #3: explicit teaching of writing skills
Post #4: argument writing
Post #5: informational writing
Post #6: narrative writing
Post #7: research and writing
Post #8: writing across the content areas

No matter what type of writing your students are engaged in, at some point you will have to assess them. Before you decide how you are going to assess them, it is important to be familiar with the different types of assessments.

You may have heard these terms tossed around in conversation, but were never quite sure of the difference. A baseline assessment is a diagnostic, which can be given at beginning of year or as each new type of writing is introduced. Formative assessments occur all year long and are a running log of students' strengths and weaknesses. Summative assessments are an end picture of proficiency of a certain skill set. These may be given at the end of a unit, or at the end of the course or year. Summative assessments can be standardized tests, cross-curricular assignments, portfolios, etc.

In this article about formative assessment, "The Bridge Between Today's Lesson and Tomorrow's," Carol Ann Tomlinson makes the following important points about using formative assessments in the classroom. Teachers should:
1. Help students understand the role of a formative assessment. It is a source of information and should not count as a grade.
2. Begin with clear KUDs. What should the student Know, Understand, and be able to Do? Your formative assessments should keep checking on that.
3. Make room for student differences. Formative assessments may allow some students to illustrate their knowledge while others write it out.
4. Provide instructive feedback that makes clear to students what they need to improve upon.
5. Make feedback user-friendly. Marking every error is time consuming and overwhelming for the student to read and process. Feedback should connect to the KUDs.
6. Assess persistently. Formative assessments can be formal or informal: a warm up activity, an exit ticket, observations while circulating the classroom, a thumbs up or thumbs down, etc.
7. Engage students with formative assessment. Let students use a rubric to assess their own work or a peer's.
8. Look for patterns. Look for clusters of student needs and plan ways to help each group of students move ahead.
9. Plan instruction around content requirements and student needs. Formative assessment should not be an end, but should lead to modification of teaching and learning plans, to designing instruction that's a better fit for student needs.
10. Repeat the process. Frequent formative assessments will help you to identify and track student growth.

In Tomlinson’s article, she says that “formative assessment…should be…the bridge or causeway between today’s lesson and tomorrow’s.” Formative assessment becomes the bridge between today's lesson and tomorrow's because while you may end a lesson with a formative assessment, like an exit ticket, that information should inform you as to where you need to start your next lesson. If all students are struggling, you may want to reteach the lesson, while if just a handful are having trouble, you will know to focus on that small group, providing additional practice and guidance.

For example, in a lesson on argument writing, I may end one lesson with students determining which of several examples is the best supported claim and giving an explanation why. If most students are successful, I will know they are ready for independent practice. If most students are unsuccessful, I may give more examples and do more guided practice before releasing the students to work independently.

While formative assessment is the type of assessment used most frequently in your classroom, you want to make sure your expectations for students are clear by using checklists and rubrics regardless of the type of assessment. Also consider the revising/editing tools you use to help students check off their checklists and achieve proficiency on their rubrics. You can read more about how I use checklists with my students in post #6 of this series on narrative writing.

You also want to keep students informed of their progress as writers through conferences. A great time to meet with students is during peer revision. While students are engaged in revision with other students, you can meet with one student without other students demanding your attention (they have someone else's!).

If, like me, you never have enough time in class for you to meet with everyone, consider having students use Google Drive to submit their drafts to you. You can then plan to meet with your neediest writers in person and provide comments to your other students using the comment feature. You can read more about how I use Google Drive with my students during the writing process here.

Next up: series wrap-up and additional resources.

Get Organized & Stay on Top of Assignments With Homework Calendars

Each year I have tried something different for homework for these two reasons:

1. My students, at least too many of them, don't "do" homework. It doesn't seem to matter how much or little is assigned, how easy or difficult, how "fun" or not. (I teach ninth grade English in an urban area, where for a variety of reasons homework is not a priority for many students.)

2. As a teacher given $100 for supplies each year and no paper, making copies for five classes of thirty students doesn't make me feel good when those copies get stuffed into book bags, dropped in the hallway, left behind in the classroom, etc.

Year 1 was a short and sweet approach. Students were assigned a one page (front and back) vocabulary sheet for homework. The vocabulary, usually 10 terms, connected to the week's text. On Fridays, I gave students a quick multiple-choice vocabulary quiz to help hold them accountable for doing their homework.

Year 2, I stuck with the one page vocabulary homework, but started limiting the students' time for the vocabulary quiz to five minutes. If they did their homework, they got it done, no problem. If they didn't do their homework, the whole period wouldn't be wasted on a 10 question multiple-choice quiz. because I had smaller classes (my school had a limited number of novels), I also started assigning students independent reading as part of their homework. Sometimes students had a choice of novels, sometimes I selected one for them. Students were assigned a certain number of pages a week to read and had to complete a certain number of comprehension questions. At the end of each novel, students completed a project or essay.

Year 3, I moved to a different school and went back to just the one page vocabulary homework.

Year 4, I switched schools again. Same one page vocabulary homework, but I also wanted increase the amount of nonfiction my students were reading. I created a series of one page nonfiction articles connected to the themes of the texts (primarily fiction) being read in class. On the back side of each article, students had a choice of paragraph formats to use to respond to the article. The paragraph formats helped to support my struggling writers and I also printed a lower level version of the article for my students with really low reading levels.

My initial nonfiction article set has general high-interest topics for teens. I also created set of Holocaust related readings to accompany my unit on Night, a set of hero/journey readings to accompany my unit on The Odyssey, and a set of drama/film related readings to accompany my unit on Romeo & Juliet. I loved these nonfiction homework assignments and could see an improvement in the writing of the students who completed them, but unfortunately too many students weren't doing them, which meant a whole lot of paper was getting wasted.

Year 5, I thought I had THE solution. I decided to continue with vocabulary based homework, but did a complete 180 on how I taught vocabulary. Instead of using vocabulary selected from weekly in-class texts, I decided to teach root-based vocabulary. Each week students were assigned a root and five words that shared that root.

For homework, students selected three assignments per week from a vocabulary choice board. Each week, the students would have a new root and five new words (printed on a half sheet of paper), but the homework choices remained the same, which meant waaaay less copying and wasted paper. The choice board had 30-40 choice in the categories of practice/word relationships, writing, visualization, and kinesthetic/movement. Students were not allowed to repeat choices within a month.

I also created a class website where I posted videos related in-class concepts and topics. As part of their homework, students were asked to watch and respond to the videos. This presented additional issues. Many of my students don't have computers with internet access at home and the website didn't seem to work reliably on cell phones, so I had to offer alternatives to this online homework. I also had to monitor the students' posts and remember to assign the homework. My use of the class website as part of homework was spotty at best throughout the year.

This year, year 6, my homework routine changed for different reasons. I loved my root-based vocabulary from the previous year, but my school decided to purchase a vocabulary books for all four grades, and since we were spending the money on the books, we were expected to use them. I also wanted to incorporate independent reading again.

I knew I would have to find a way to keep both myself and my students accountable. Posting the assignments in class daily or weekly would be a waste of precious class time plus I could forget to do it, students could choose not to copy it down, and it would be a nightmare to keep up with students who were frequently absent. And that is when I came up with my brilliant idea, homework calendars!

Homework calendars are exactly what they sound like, a calendar of homework assignments. I printed a homework calendar for each month, broken down by week and then by day.

Homework calendars are awesome because:
1. Students always have their assignments even if they are absent, mentally absent, come late, go to the nurse's office, etc.
2. I can't forget to assign it.
3. No time is wasted copying it down.
4. It is easy for students to catch up on assignments and even work ahead if they want.
5. It makes homework assignments clear for parents, and can easily be emailed or given out at Back to School Night or parent/teacher conferences.
6. It can be created, copied, and handed out every few weeks or monthly.
7. You can make your homework calendar as detailed as you want and then send shorter messages via text using Remind.

Creating a homework calendar requires some advance planning, but is definitely worth it!

Visualizing Theme with Evidence-Based Collages

Theme is a concept that students struggle with even at the ninth grade level so I'm always looking for new ways to teach it. This year I came up with the idea of having my students make theme collages to reinforce the idea that themes should be messages about life, which are general enough to apply to situations outside of a text.

The first step in creating a theme collage is figuring out the theme! Students used this graphic organizer to collect information from the text that would help them to determine a theme. I gave students a choice of two short stories, but you could use a variety of fiction or nonfiction texts.