Community Narratives

 Last Wednesday, the students had their narratives already prepared to copy into their pamphlet. Cindy had reviewed them and suggested one more sentence to transform into a "show not tell" sentence for each student. We helped brainstorm and check spelling with students one-on-one. When everyone was finished I explained the pamphlet book construction. The kids remembered that the last book we made was an accordion fold book. For a pamphlet book pages are folded in half and stacked into a signature to be sewn-bound along the spine. We did a quick math computation: the children counted their sentences/the pages they'd need which had to be divided in half to count how many sheets of folded paper they'd need. For example for a 10 page book one needs 5 sheets of paper. We explained how to copy the sentences into their books using a heavy-lined sheet of paper laid under the page they were working on for guide lines to show through.

Each child figured out how many sheets they would need an we passed out the paper for their folded signatures. The rest of the session was spent with intense focus as the students very carefully copied out their stories into the books.

 At the end of the period we passed out an additional blank folded sheet to serve as a title page, as well as the cover pages. I had scanned in each student's community embroidery and printed them out onto cardstock for the covers, since their stories had been inspired by the embroideries they had made.

 Before our session on Friday, I pierced each book 3 times along the spine with an awl to prepare for binding. As a class, together we followed directions on how to sew a 3-point pamphlet binding. Up through the center hole, down through the top hole, up through the bottom hole, and down through the center hole, with the two ends tied together across the long float down the spine. Unfortunately, the students had trouble keeping their holes lined up. Learning curve! If I were to do this with this age group again I would either hole-punch the holes for larger, more easily lined-up holes, or I would have clips to hold the pages firmly in place for binding. However, with help, everyone managed to get their books bound!

 The rest of the session was spent making sure the cover and title pages were complete, and working on illustrating their stories.

 The students were encouraged to read the sentences on each page, picture it in their mind, and draw all the details they saw. They were asked to use the whole page and consider backgrounds for their objects and figures.

 Cindy reminded the students that if they were to read their book to a kindergartner, a younger child would want to see big, bright, easy-to-see pictures.

 I think we'll spend a little bit more time on illustrations next week before we wrap up the collaborative project. Only a few more days left!!

River Timeline

Wednesday and Friday this week we continued our focus on the Delaware River, but this time looked at the timeline of who was here and how it was used. We started off by doing a guided reading of (help me out Cindy- I forget the title and author!) 

As we read the book aloud as a class, Cindy and I would stop and explain any terms we thought were hard to understand. The children each had 4 post-it notes to take notes for the 4 periods of time we would be discussing. On the board I created a similar timeline showing the 4 time periods of Indians, Settlers, Industrial, and Modern. As we moved through the book, we wrote notes on the board under each time period. I also had a strip of paper folded in 4 to visually illustrate the changes in the landscape and the river over time.

With Wednesday being a half day, the children were a bit distractible, and it took longer than I expected to get through the guided reading. We had just enough time at the end to pass out the folded accordion book pages for the students to put their names and post-it notes into.

Friday was more productive. With the paper strip timeline up on the board, we reviewed the special information about each time period. The students remembered quite a bit! We also brainstormed some various ways to represent trees, tree stumps, wigwams, farms, houses, factories, and inventions to create a visual timeline in our books as background and illustration for the text. The students were allowed to use colored pencil or crayon to draw their symbols. We started off with the river representing the timeline down the center of the book, and with the color changing on the third page to show how dirty the river got during the industrial revolution. While students were working, Cindy and I circulated the room, encouraging students to fill the pages, asking them how they were representing their ideas, helping them if they got stuck, etc.

It's interesting to see how wide the range of artistic development there is among the students. Some of them followed directions and used the images as symbols, like on a map.

Mary's visual timeline

Brooke's timeline with symbols

Other students took a more pictorial approach, drawing scenes along their timeline. 

 

Samia's scenic timeline

 

Angelica got engrossed in details in the wigwams and horse

Isaiah's is between symbolic and scenic

Next time we'll copy sentences describing each time period onto sticker labels to insert on each page and bind our books with covers.

Plants of the Delaware and River words brainstorm

On Friday, I hung up the collaborative Delaware River map for the kids to copy into their sketchbooks while a few of the students finished up their leaf embroideries. Cindy helped the embroiderers while I got set up for our lesson. We brought in the laptop and projector in order to take a look at a satellite view of our watershed. The kids noticed that the satellite view was like a bird's-eye view. We located the Delaware and compared it to the fiber version to make sure we could find all our river parts (source, meander, tributary, mouth/delta).

looking at the satellite view-
the kids were excited to see the zoom in and out to see the world
and then their school close-up

 We pointed out the low land in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey where there are many farms and a lot of "green" on the satellite view. We brainstormed with the kids some of the plants and crops that grow in our area, based on the farms they've seen or visited, or fruits and vegetables they eat at home. They came up with strawberries, corn, tomatoes, blueberries, pumpkins, watermelons, and carrots. We even noted that Chester County, PA is famous for mushrooms! We saw lots of green in NJ, and I pointed out the gigantic forest of pine trees called the Pine Barrens. We looked at the mountains and talked about why there aren't many farms up in the mountains, because of colder temperatures and rough, rocky terrain, but there are lots of forests.

Emily cuts out her embroidered leaf

 Next we transitioned to cutting our leaves out to place on the collaborative Delaware River map. I asked the students to decide where they wanted to put their leaf, mark it on their drawing, and have a reason why they wanted it there. I showed the students my sample cut-out leaf, and Cindy noted it was an organic shape not a geometric shape.

Liz decides where her leaf should go on her map
 and Justin shares his leaf ready to pin up

 Cindy supervised the cutting-out while I stayed near the river model ready to pin the kids' leaves as they were finished.As students completed cutting out their leaf, they came up to me with their leaf and sketchbook to tell me where they wanted their leaf to go and why. Some chose spots in New Jersey because that's where they go in the summer. Some wanted their leaf up in the mountains with the forests. A few wanted to be in the suburbs because there are lots of trees where they live.

the giant river model before the leaves got pinned

When all the leaves went up, we moved on to brainstorming for our next project- a river poem to add to our map. Cindy helped keep us on track for what kind of words and language they'll need for writing their cinquain next week by prompting possibilities as I wrote the students' words up onto the board into a giant word splash. The children created their own version in their sketchbooks, taking notes, which finally, we had them go back and color/circle words they think they'll want to use.

Visit My River brochures

Cindy and the kids finished up the "Visit my River" brochures and placed them on display in the hallway along with the river models. They turned out great!

Persuasive Writing/River Model Brochure

Cindy's account below of Friday is thorough. Here are some more pictures of what happened on the art side. I started off by showing the students an exemplar I'd made. I explained that for a brochure, we want it to be eyecatching as well as interesting to read. You can persuade people with words, but you can also persuade them with colors and images. I told them about each of the steps for the project and that they'd start once their final draft was ready. The students have practice with a "centers" activity format in the classroom with individual groups doing separate activities, which equipped them well with the more organic flow of work that occurred on Friday. When I arrived, most of the students had reached final draft stage of the persuasive writing for their brochures. In the back of the room I set up a station for the distribution of watercolor sets and paper for creating a colored background on 2 sides of a page for the brochure. As students were ready they came back to me, I demoed the instructions very quickly and told them what to do when they were finished. When the painting stage was complete I had students clean up the watercolor sets and set aside their page to dry while they created a drawing for the interior of the brochure. I asked students to read what they wrote and if/when a mental image came to mind in response to what they had written to create an illustration drawing from that mental image.

Bailey draws an illustration for her brochure

When their drawing was complete and their page dry, students came back to the stamping station to create a border for the interior and exterior of their brochure. In the original description to the whole class we mentioned that "border" and "frame" mean similar things. I asked them whether their river showed a rural, suburban, or urban community and whether they could find stamps that would relate to their model and writing.

Students work on stamping their borders- they loved this part!

 When stamping was complete, I had them fold the page in half, glue a picture of their river model to the front cover, and create a bold colorful title. Then they were to bring their draft to Cindy for a final edit before copying their text to the lined page with their drawing. A few students reached the very last step, which was to cut out the text and drawing to glue into the interior of the brochure.



Daniella shows off her front cover: "Visit the Swan River!"

The classroom was a hive of focused activity. It's a bit hard to wrap my head around managing 24 kids at staggered points in a process, but it worked. There was no down-time or boredom happening. And the staggered aspect meant I actually had a lot of one-on-one interactions with the students.

We'll be heading back into fiber arts next week as we begin elements of our big collaborative piece and focus more specifically on the Delaware River.



What the Gleaners did next

I went back and photographed some of the kids drawings of what they thought the Gleaners did next:


Justin's 2-page spread with fold-out perspective



Angelica copied the pose and details of her figure straight from the painting!



Erin paid close attention to the figure in the painting too.

Danielle shows her lady going home to cook bread from her wheat.