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.

Apology Poems and Embroidery!

On Wednesday we had an assembly, the Crabgrass Theater performed short poems for us using puppets. The children were very entertained and inspired! I had chosen the "Apology Poetry" activity purposely as a follow up to cash in on the inspiration of the assembly and to connect Marie's art for the day, leaf rubbings. The children did an incredible job on both the art and the poem. They really connected their feelings from the poem to what Marie had them doing, leaf rubbings. It was a perfect storm!

The leftover paper from the rubbings was so pretty, Marie suggested the kids somehow use it, so we put their final edited poem (only some spelling errors) onto the paper and hung it in the hall. The kids felt incredibly successful!
I had to give them a lesson on the format of the poem beforehand, at the beginning of the lesson. Marie and I had the kids brainstorm what people do to leaves, and had the kids pretend they were leaves being separated from the only home they ever knew, the tree. We all physically acted out this separation and it created profound empathy for the leaf. We acted out how we love the sound of a cruching leaf, and pretended to jump into a big pile of crunchy leaves. This role-playing made the poems even more touching and heartfelt!

Friday, the kids worked on embroidering their leaves. It was the perfect way to end the busy week. They needed some downtime, Marie and I floated around the room helping with threading and knotting, and the leaves came out beautifully!

Leaf stitching

On Friday the students had a chance to embroider their leaf rubbings to make one of them stand out through bright color and to add detail. I introduced a new stitch to them- satin stitch to make thick lines. Cindy and I helped the students with threading needles, tying knots, and problem-solving.

 For the most part it was a quiet and productive way to end the week.

 I believe the metaphor of stitching in this project is that embroidering is a way of adding detail to an image just like we add detail to a main idea. The stitches and colors are like the variety of vocabulary one uses to make a written piece more interesting. I think we need to make that connection more explicit.

 Craftsmanship is surprisingly high among these students in their stitching. I see mostly careful, even stitches. Only 2 students needed help couching down giant floats on the surface, whereas last year at least a 3rd of each class had trouble with the concept of even size and even space stitching. It makes me wonder how their measuring and ruler skills or their estimating skills are in Math.

 This surprises me to an extent, as their handwriting is not as careful, and I've seen them rush through other activities. Hopefully this process helps develop fine motor skills and attention span that could be transferred to other domains.

Another curious aspect of the students' work process is that so many of them feel compelled to stand up while they stitch. I don't mind if they stand, except then sometimes they start to wander and clump into social groups. I think perhaps when they sit they don't feel like they have full extension of their arm for pulling the thread through the fabric.

Apology Poems

Cindy had the children complete their "Apology to a Leaf" poems and copy them onto the iron transfers of their leaf rubbings and then mounted and hung them in the hallway!

 Some of them show off the students' new thesaurus skills for learning new vocabulary and making writing more interesting. Take a look:

 Alex: "To My Poor Leaf"- I confess for ripping you in half then breaking your spine. I was wrong because I was bored sitting on the ground at my soccer game. I'm sorry and I tried to put you back together with bandaids.

 Hailey: "Sorry to my leaf"- I am penitent for plunging into a pile of you and ripping you apart. I'm so apologetic, please forgive me. I was bored on a fall day and I saw a leaf. I picked it up and crunched you. I saw a pile of leaves and jumped in them.

 Laia: "To my leaf"- I ripped the leaf into pieces. I was wrong to rip you in pieces. I ripped you because I wanted to make an Art Project. I apologize.

 Daniella: "Sorry Leaf"- Please forgive me for pulling you off the tree. I just could not help myself. You were so pretty.

Emily: "Fall Leaves"- I am sorry I stepped on you and ripped and crunched you in my hand. I apologize. I stepped on you. I was wrong. I crunched you because it was a neat sound.

Plant life in the Delaware watershed

Today was amazing! We had a storm and a windy morning that transformed the world into a carpet of leaves, a perfect morning for our lesson on plant life in the Delaware watershed. Before coming to Comly this morning I took a stroll and selected a variety of leaves to bring in with me to share. We started class talking about the storm and the wind and asked the kids if they had noticed anything different this morning. We looked at the globe to see where we were and why we have season changes. I told them about my leaf collecting and said obviously if I picked them up this morning they must all be plants that grow near the Delaware River! With the kids in pairs we handed out a leaf to each pair and asked them if they could identify it by comparing it to drawings of labeled leaves on the overhead projector. Most of them were quite successful, and it gave us a chance to talk about some of our art elements like line and shape as well as have some compare and contrast practice.


the collaborative background cut and pinned

I had brought in the background for our collaborative piece, which is starting off as a large river model of the Delaware in felt fabric. The kids identified the source and mouth and tributary as well as the names of the states the river passes through. The model at the moment just shows land and water, and the kids correctly guessed that we needed some plants next!

I brought in green fabric and fabric pastels to do leaf rubbings for some color and texture. Cindy had lots of texture plates for the kids to use for this project. This makes our 3rd printing technique (silkscreen, stamping, and now rubbings). I showed an example and asked the class how they thought I'd gotten the leaf images on there- it was interesting to hear some of the responses (paint the leaf and press it on! Trace it! Silkscreen it!). When they were ready each table come back to select their leaves and colors. Each student printed 2 leaves using 2 colors. As they finished I quickly ironed the oils out to heatset. Ironing between paper meant there was also a resulting transfer print of the image to the paper.
While I worked with each table to do leaf rubbings Cindy had the students work on a poetry and then a reading piece on the same theme of Fall leaves. Their poetry style was to write an "apology poem" much like William Carlos Williams' poem "This is Just to Say":

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

She gave them some different ways to say "I apologize", and shared 3 elements of an apology poem, including the apology, an explanation of what happened, and a reason why. The children imagined an apology to a fallen leaf, and I'm so happy that they all had a dry fallen leaf in front of them while they did this- the result of a morning impulse inspired by a windy autumn day. I suggested to Cindy that she might want to use the iron transfer papers with their poems somehow for their final copy.

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.



River Model-First Try at a Persuasive Writing

On Wednesday, Marie and I were all set to have the children compose a persuasive piece to be edited and used in a "brochure". This would give the students the experience/practice of using what they have learned about Main Idea and details as they write in a persuasive style, which they hadn't yet done. We talked about who their 'audience' would be (people that would come to visit the river) and the purpose of the writing (to convince those people to visit their river). We had a four-square with the general topics already put in to hand out to the kids. We had decided to use this opportunity to have the kids show what they understood about landforms (the first square); the source (the second square); and the mouth (the third square); as they tried to persuade people to visit their river.

As the lesson progressed, we could see that merging the idea of a persuasive piece with and informational piece (the landforms, the source, the mouth) was confusing for the students, and their writing was not focused. This was certainly a moment to reflect for me as a teacher! The students struggled through trying to include information as they tried to persuade, and the writing pieces needed so much support that I decided to simply use it as writing practice, and to start from scratch on Friday with a more defined writing task.

On Friday, before Marie arrived, I introduced a graphic organizer that was specific to a Persuasive Writing. I modeled the purpose of a persuasive (in this case a brochure) and filled in a large graphic organizer that had 3 Main Reasons, each branching off into 2 details. We decided on the 3 main reasons someone should visit the river would be 1) what you can do there 2) what you can see there and 3) how easy it is to get there. I used the kids ideas to fill in the 2 details for each of these Main Ideas, and reiterated the fact that the conclusion would restate the main purpose-Visit My River.

I then modeled writing each main idea as the beginning of each paragraph as a full sentence, and then added each detail as full sentences. I reminded them to add even more details, if they thought they could. I gave another mini-lesson on using a Thesaurus to find better (expensive) word choices to make their writing more interesting to the reader. I then handed out the blank version of the graphic organizer I had used on the board.

Now the students had 2 tasks to focus on, the persuasive writing and using better word choices. The persuasive writing and the searching for better word choices had also both been modeled. Now, the task began to move smoothly! By the time Marie arrived, most of the students were done the graphic organizer and ready to begin the writing. Marie explained how they would make the brochure, and noted the visual elements that would draw "potential visitors" to take a brochure and then perhaps decide to visit the river. She explained how just as the writing was important, so was the decorative aspects of the brochure. She encouraged them to look closely at their writing to choose what to decorate the brochure with (we were using lots of stamps of Naure); again connecting the art to the writing.

Danielle is ready to put her text and picture into her brochure cover

The lesson went smoothly, as each child finished their rough draft, they came to me for editing and then to Marie to embellish the brochure. As in all writing tasks, each child moved at their own pace and the classroom was full of children at different steps of productivity! The writing in the brochures was now more focused and lots of students actually used the thesaurus to change particular words!

Note: I should mention at this point that this particular group of third graders came in September as Basic and Below Basic Readers and Writers, and 1/3 of the class have IEP's that entitle them to extra support from a Resource Room Teacher. Math is also challenge for them. I have adjusted my teaching style since September to accomodate the types of learners in this classroom, we move steadily and methodically, with lots of visual prompts and reminders.

River model wrap-up

Cindy and I recognized an opportunity for an added writing activity and assessment based off of the students' completed river models. We decided to have them create a brochure to invite tourists to visit their river as a persuasive writing piece. I remembered the children being very excited about Captain Dee's riverboat brochure when we went to Upper Black Eddy and thought they'd enjoy making their own. As I started to introduce the concept of the brochure on Wednesday, one of the students pulled out that very brochure from his desk! We looked at what kind of information is included in an advertisement, such as pictures, exciting sensory descriptions of what people will do and see, and contact information.
We had the students look at their river models and fill out a four square writing organizer to prompt their writings, and Cindy modeled how to fill it out on a transparency on the overhead projector. The reading specialist was with us, and she created a set of sentence starters for the kids to use when they started writing their paragraphs. Despite the modeling and the sentence starters, the writing portion was a challenge for many of the students. It took a lot of work and editing to push their ideas.
I think the students' "plateau" was evident. I'm going to read some when I go in on Friday and see if they're what we want to use as the final "copy" for their river brochure. On Friday we'll paint and stamp the background paper and draw pictures to include in the brochure. I've taken photos of ant's eye views of their maps to collage in (see above). If time allows, they'll include their writing, if not, Cindy is considering a revised, more persuasive version of the writing. On the one hand it's frustrating that this supplemental extension activity did not go as simply as I had thought it would, but on the other hand it's good to be able to identify the students' strength and weaknesses to know what we need to work on.

River Model videos

Alex describes her river model in progress above.

River Model creation Day

On Friday afternoon we launched into the creation of our river models. I reviewed the parts of the river and what was required as I showed them an exemplar model. Then we gathered at the back table for a demonstration of how to use the model magic. I built up an example model showing them how to warm up and shape the dough to add the various features to their model.

the kids gathered for a demonstration of how to use the clay

 Then we passed out the materials, got names on the boards, and the kids started building up their ground layer. They started with only earth tones and blue for the ground and water, and as they became ready I passed out green for plants, black for roads, white for snowcaps, etc.


Brooke has all her landforms and starts to add buildings and roads

The building elements were available at the back of the room to add when they were ready. We had a lot of adult help in the room. Cindy and Myself, Miss Linda and Mrs McCaffrey all helped the kids get the first layer spread over the surface. Once they had their ground layer down, most of the kids had no problem placing elements, working with the model magic, and letting their imaginations go. They enjoyed working with the clay and worked intently and deliberately. Clay is such a fabulous medium for kids-- like stitching it requires a lot of manipulation of materials in the hands. With both hands at work both sides of the brain are engaged!

Alex's river model is complete- check out her dimensional trees

Some of the kids perhaps tried to include too much and there are some scale problems, but we didn't stress scale as much as we stressed what features were necessary.

Justin and Isaiah discovered their models could join to form a bigger body of water

 It as fascinating to see them all together and hear the kids' reaction. They felt like they had created a whole world together.

the side view of everyone's models when complete

 Next we've decided to have the kids do a written piece using persuasive language about why someone should take a cruise down their river. It will be made like a brochure and be based off their individual models.

"It's like the WHOLE WORLD"- the kids said

We're looking forward to setting this up as a display in the hallway for everyone to see. And everyone WILL see it now that the art room is next door and the entire school comes down our hall at some point every week.

Luckily Cindy had some extra packs of model magic- I had never used it with kids before and was unsure how much would be needed. But it all worked out. The room might have seemed chaotic to anyone walking by, but it was a productive environment, and we met our goal of finishing with some time to spare even.

River Model Prep

To prepare the students for our river model project and incorporate some reading practice, Cindy found a great 2-page story about 3 kids making a relief map model out of dough. A lot of art vocabulary was used, like modeling and representation, and Cindy defined dough in a very tactile way that should have them sparked for working with the model magic on Friday! Cindy and the guided reading specialist pulled aside particular kids for guided reading groups to help them through the story while I kept an eye on class progress, answered any vocab questions, and redirected some of them to where to find the answers for the comprehension questions at the end. It was interesting to see how so many of them gloss over or write simple/easy answers, but when prodded or questioned to think about the "why" then they are able to provide a more in-depth answer. There's a lot of copying going on, even artistically, and I wonder right now if it's just a strategy that helps the below-level students keep up and how much to allow it.
While we waited for students to finish the reading we passed out sketchbooks and gave kids time to color some of the sketches they had done on our trips. It was nice to revisit the experience that way. Some of the kids debated about what they saw when/where.

With everyone ready, I asked the kids what the reading was about (making a model out of clay). I asked them if they remembered seeing any other models when we were on our trips (the swing bridge at the canals, the Delaware river map at Penn's Landing, and the pollution watershed model at Riverbend). I told them we would be making our own river models and so we needed to brainstorm what important things should be on the model. With "Parts of a River" written on the board the kids helped fill in the spidergram (water, land, tributaries, mountains, source, mouth, animals, plants, roads, houses, bridges, boats, buildings, urban, suburban, rural).

When we got to the last 3 words about community types a student hopped up and brought me a chart they had made with Cindy showing urban, suburban, and rural in concentric rings with pictograms of what one might see in each spot and how crowded or spread out they'd be (I love seeing how much drawing Cindy uses in her lessons- is this a new thing? Even in the math lesson I saw at the end she asked the kids which way it was easiest to solve the problem-- and stressed drawing a picture). This gave us a quick review and opportunity to talk about communities we've seen and experienced, and compare the kids' more suburban life with my city life.

 With that I told the students that we'd be making our own river models that share all the physical river features (and we circled source, mouth, land, river, tributary, and meander) but that they'd be able to choose whether their model showed a rural, suburban or urban area. I passed out the mdf boards we'll be using as a base for the children to trace in their sketchbooks and make a plan. I asked them what we call that plan an artist makes before they start a project (Sketch!).
The kids had plenty of time to draw a design for their river model, which I hope will make the creation of it on Friday an easier process. It allowed for some problem-solving and checking of student understanding.
I think we're ready to make some models!