Leaf Painting

When most parents and teachers think about fall sensory play, the first thing that comes to mind is pumpkin carving. Pumpkin carving is great! You can touch the gooey guts, find the seeds, and support some fine motor work with decorating and (if you feel comfortable) carving.

But after Halloween this activity gets a little tired, so what is there to do? Hand turkeys, yes but that’s really only good right before the Thanksgiving break. And not everyone is excited about celebrating Thanksgiving. So what else can you do with the for a fall art and sensory project?

I recommend leaf painting:

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Leaf painting w poets @rebeccaschool_ny

A post shared by Donnie Welch Poetry (@donniewelchpoetry) on Nov 5, 2019 at 4:07pm PST

Quite simply it’s painting with real leaves that have fallen off trees in the season. You can get leaves of all different shapes, sizes and colors! If your class takes trips into the community or if you’re a parent doing this at home, you can gather leafs from a local park and make it part of a larger science theme taking about the how and why of the leaf colors. I’ve also coupled this activity with sight words to make a poem about fall weather, fall clothing, and the like for poets working on those life skills in their classes.

I love using orange, yellow, and red paint on a black poster board because it really makes everything pop! But white or other colored poster works fine too.

In practice, I’ll glob some paint onto a plate and let the poets dip the leaves in like brushes. They can then drag the leaves, brush style, across the paper or stamp it flat to get an outline of the leaf. Depending on the class size I might go one or two at a time, or just let a whole small group go for it at once.

As it dries, let the leaves that really got covered in paint stay on the paper. They should stick with the dried paint and should stay pretty fresh for a little while. I haven’t tried laminating, but it was recommended to me by a colleague. If you go that route, I’d suggest cutting it into parts and using a small laminator (one that you can put the laminate over first) so that the leaves don’t clog the machinery. If laminated the leaves should keep even longer since they’ll be sealed in plastic.

Give it a try! And if you do, please share some pictures in the comments below!

Free Timeline for Teachers

The graduate poetry workshops at Rebecca School are working on a timeline project. The poets are thinking back on important moments and events in their lives as well as thinking ahead to what they'd like to accomplish after graduation.

In prepping for this, I searched for open source timeline templates I could use as models for the students and I stumbled upon this resource: https://time.graphics/

It's a free timeline creator. This tool is a bit more intense than what I need, but could be a powerful site for history and social studies teachers.

The free version allows you to create and access open sourced timelines that are very in depth! Topics range from the Marvel Cinematic Universe to the lives of American Presidents with just about everything in between. A skilled teacher engaging students with this could not only hit on their subject skills, but also open a discourse on digital literacy since all of these are public and open for comment and critique.

While this wasn't right for me and my workshops, I hope another educator reading can do some good with this! And if you do, please leave a link to your class timeline in the comments!

Carton of faded, worn, and browning historic photos. In the main can be seen a man in an 18th century army uniform, a well dressed boy, and the head of a Victorian age woman.

Social Stories for Museum Educators

I’m putting together social stories for the classrooms at PS 73 before I start my next Bronx Museum partnerships. These sessions begin with each of my three classes visiting the museum and touring the current exhibit with me.

This tour can admittedly be a bit stressful. All children like to explore and touch, but compounding that innate curiosity with developmental differences can understandably involve a lot of my saying, “Let’s take one big step back in 3…2…1!”

There are a range of strategies to deal with this temptation to touch from leadership and classroom (so to speak) management ideas, to providing items related to the art which can be felt, rubbed, squeezed, etc. These can all be great, but I like to be proactive as well so a tool I love using is a social story.

A social story is a short text that uses simple language and realistic images to describe an event or social situation. They are often in third person to position the class or individual in the narrative. Social stories are especially useful tools for students who have difficulty with abstraction. So, for example, imagine a child with developmental or multiple disabilities who has never been to a museum before. What are the rules? What happens in a museum? What does this museum look like? What even is a museum?

These fundamental questions can all be answered in a social story to help students better prepare and, as a result, better navigate the space once the mystery and potential anxiety of it has been removed.

In my first partnership I didn’t make a social story and I had a student who believed they were going to the Bronx Zoo right up until they walked through the museum doors. Teachers telling him it was the Bronx Museum, not the zoo, didn’t help. There was no visual reference for this student, he had never been to a museum before so in saying “no, it’s a museum,” there was no connection for the word.

The way children expected to act in a zoo and art museum are very different, so understandably this student wanted to run around and explore the way a kid might in the open air and relatively open space of a zoo. This wasn’t a failure on the student’s part, he participated in all my activities and really enjoyed the art, but rather a failure of planning and after this trip a light bulb went off and I realized (duh) I should be using social stories.

While certainly cure-all I noticed a big difference in the museum trip, especially for my youngest class, the following Spring when I did introduced a story to the classes before their visits. That said, unless you or your organization has the time to go into the school ahead of time this strategy necessitates teacher buy in. The hope is that the school educators you’re working with will read the story to the students ahead of the visit and leave a classroom copy out for students to reference or flip through when they have free time.

As an example for museum educators out there, I’ve removed the identifying content from a previous exhibit’s social story and made it free to download. You can access it by clicking here or on the sample page below. Oh, and as I mentioned in a previous post, feel free to use any font you want, but be sure it’s one where all the letters, capital and lowercase, are easy to distinguish from one another. I usually just opt for the standard Times New Roman.

Image of a social story page with a picture of the Bronx Museum exterior and the words in large, bold type face.

Ceramic Stories E-Book Launch

Excited to announce that I have a new e-book for sale! Ceramic Stories: Storytelling & Gardening Workshops

On a white background an image of terra cotta pots in bright paints on top of a table. Brushes, open cans, and scrap paper can also be seen around the project. Above and below the image the title and subtitle are situated in a handwriting like font.

This text is a step-by-step guide to the Ceramic Stories I program I run over the summer. It’s a program that combines sensory play, nature play, and storytelling! Below is the introduction from the e-book.

Introduction

In the winter of 2017 I was at an open mic at Word Up Books in Washington Heights. The host encouraged us to chat with our neighbors during the set-up and their gregarious energy coupled with the free wine convinced me that perhaps I should, in fact, chat with my neighbor.

I was sitting next to the Community Engagement Manager for the New York Restoration Project (NYRP). I hadn’t heard of the organization before so we chatted about their work creating and maintaining community gardens around the city. Conversation eventually turned to what I did for work, so I talked about the poetry workshops I was running at Rebecca School.

At the end of the open mic we talked more and they mentioned that NYRP was looking for new programs. Would I be interested in bringing my workshops into one of their gardens? 

Of course I was! 

Community garden tucked between tall New York City buildings. In the foreground can be seen pavers marking a path, benches, compost bin, rain bucket, and array of trees and bushes. The side fencing of the garden is painted teal with red, poppy flowers painted eye level. Above are hung red and white cloud-human figures from a recent public-art exhibit.

At this time I was still a teaching assistant and part time Creative Writing Teacher at the Rebecca School.  This was an opportunity to bring my workshops into a new location and how cool that they could be in a community garden?

After a few follow up emails and some site visits, I found myself workshopping in the beautiful Lucille McClarey Wicked Friendship Garden on West 150th Street.

In this first year I ran my Sensorimotor Poetry Workshops in the garden, combining movement and literacy learning, treating it much the same as I would a classroom session. I was too nervous to differentiate or deviate from my design.

The sessions went well enough, but when I was invited back to do it the following summer I knew I wanted to do something special, something unique to the space. This was a garden after all, not a classroom. I wanted to take my sensory ideas and infuse them with Nature Play.

Nature Play is a concept I first encountered at SXSWedu 2017. In a nutshell, it’s using nature as a means of experiential learning, especially in early childhood education. As an avid hiker and backpacker this thought engaged me and stayed with me well after the conference, but I had yet to find a way to incorporate it into my teaching.

Then inspiration struck. 

I was looking at some flower pots that my partner had painted in our apartment and thought: why not paint flower pots in the gardens…but paint stories. I thought of Keats’ “Ode to a Grecian Urn” and the way ancient civilizations throughout the world told stories on their pottery. 

I decided to play on that concept by letting participants tell their stories on flower pots. Then, once the paint dried, we planted in them. When planting we had a sensory exploration of soil, pebbles, rocks, all that messy, garden stuff, and then at the end the children and families would had a potted flower to take home.

With the success of that summer’s program Ceramic Stories was born.

Terra Cotta flower pot with a painted green alligator. The alligator has a rainbow coming out of its mouth and flowers around it. The pot is sitting on a wooden bench and in the background is the greenery from a bush and ferns.

This text is a guide to run your own Ceramic Stories project. It includes an outline for each of the sessions (storyboarding, painting, planting) with example pictures, materials lists, storyboard, and a suggested resources list at the end. Throughout the text, participants will be referred to as gardeners.

As with all my work, please adapt Ceramic Stories to meet the needs of your gardeners. Even though it’s broken into three parts, it doesn’t need to be completed in three sessions. Take your time and have fun!

Get your copy of Ceramic Stories today!

Rhythmic Reading

I've started two YouTube playlists on Rhythmic Reading, or how I use affect and rhythm to bring picture books to life.

They're very much a work in progress, but I'm excited to share them with you all as I learn along the way.

The first playlist has read alouds in which I read picture books the way I would in classrooms and workshops.

The second playlist uses these same books, but now I take pauses in the reading to discuss the hows and whys behind my reading style. It's a free video class on an easy to learn technique that I hope parents and educators can use!

This is my first time filiming in earnest and I have a lot to learn, so any feedback and comments are welcome!

Also, please let me know if there are any books you think I should record. I have a list already that I'm working through, but I'd be happy to make some additions!

What's the Weather

What’s the Weather?

What’s the Weather?

What’s the weather like today?

Is it sunny? Is it cloudy?

What’s the Weather like today?

Is a pretty standard song classrooms use for morning meetings . And, as it turns out, weather is something a lot of kids like to talk about!

I think it’s because it effects them immediately. Weather is easy to recognize and it’s impact is easy to quantify. For example, if it’s a rainy day the park trip will probably be canceled. So the connection between weather and expectations or emotions is pretty direct.

For that reason i really love to use weather and seasonal imagery (Halloween, the winter Holidays) as prompts in my workshops where poets either have difficulty ideating, or on the cusp of being able to abstract and come up with their own prompts.

I’ll oftentimes reference whatever the weather currently is, talking about summer heat and thunderstorms or how could New York winters can get! This gives the prompt a bit more immediacy as the poets can rely on their senses and short-term memory to support their abstraction.

Words on a white board in black expo marker read “Brrr! It’s cold outside / so I” with a long line after “I” for student response.

I remember very vividly sitting in my second grade class when a thunderstorm opened up torrential rain. None of us could pay attention to what was happening, we were transfixed on the storm outside. The teacher said, “Haven’t you ever seen rain before?” Which, besides being rude, missed the point entirely. Of course we’d seen rain before, but every time it’s a little different and a exciting. There’s a natural curiosity to weather, in part because its something so out of human control, that has made the the subject of paintings, poems, stories, and songs throughout human history. I want to take this same curiosity in the poets I work with and hone it.

Words on a white board in blue expo marker read “It’s raining it’s pouring the” This line is repeated again and again.

Weather can be a great entryway into other topics, especially with a newer group. I might not know the poets well enough to know all their interests and passions yet, but I can find a common ground and common curiosity through what’s happening outside.

Words on a white board in black expo marker read “Brrrr! It’s cold outside so I…” with various student answers written. The answers are hard to completely discern at the distance of the photo.

Font Fopas

I can't tell you the amount of times I print something off quickly for workshop, read it, realize every capital i looks like a lower case L and debate with myself whether or not I should recycle the papers or just power ahead.

So for a small tip: take a few extra seconds in your prep time to make sure you use a font where capital i and L are obviously different, especially working with poets just learning to read and write. I usually keep it basic with Times New Roman, but there are definitely more fun and engaging fonts out there that also make a clear distinction.

This simple edit makes it easier for everyone to read, whether you're printing something for a collaborative found poem, individual reading activity, or blowing the letters up large for an activity on the board.

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Wall Writing

As I’ve mentioned in other posts I keep the workshop spaces completely clear except for the essentials. For some groups that’s chairs, for others it’s movement ques, and for still others it’s nothing at all!

As one of my workshops is focuses on writing longer and longer texts like sonnets, there wasn’t a great space for the poets to write.

Bringing in a table with chairs or some desks was a possibility, but that always felt like a big transition to have in the middle of a session. The alternative, having the poets lie down or hunch over while writing, is poor form both in terms of posture and mechanics.

Colleen Gabbert, my OT colleague who facilitates this session with me, recommended taping paper to the wall and having the poets stand and write. This little change has made a huge difference!

Not only are their body posture and fine motor work better, but the poets who might otherwise need sensory breaks from sitting are able to engage in the writing activity for longer durations. I imagine because they’re not getting as tired from using only their core to support them or (when they can no longer support themselves) hunching over and losing focus on the group activity.

I’ve noticed that standing also allows a more seamless sensory release. For example, poets can rock or pace if needed while thinking of the next line while. When sitting, the poets had a tendency to stay seated or if they stood up it would be to move quickly around the room or leave altogether for a quick break or support in the hallway.

Some of the poets prefer staying seated and when they do I try to encourage that they use a binder or book to hold the text so that they sit up right. It certainly isn’t perfect (old habits die hard), but for the poets who accept the tool of wall writing it’s helped immensely!

Just a reminder that if things are feeling a bit stilted or stale in your class or sessions, the answer isn’t always a big change. Sometimes all you need is a different perspective (make friends outside your department!) and a couple pieces of tape!

A hand holds a pen to a piece of lined paper taped to a white school wall.

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Teachers & Writers Publication

It has been a wild couple weeks for me, but wanted to take a second to share that I recently published “Found Poetry & Accessibility” in Teachers & Writers Magazine. The piece offers three ways to use found poetry as an accessible and inclusive entryway into poetry.

Give it a read!

Example of a black out poem. A page from a book about birds has large strokes of black blocking out specific lines of words, images, and design details. The remaining words form a poem and in the bottom left is the picture of a bird.

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Sonnet Challenge

For Valentine’s Day I challenged one of my workshops to write sonnets.

This was my first time teaching a form in any of my workshops. I’ve done haiku scavenger hunts before, but those were more about the experiential nature of haiku than any of the form’s diction and thematic restrictions.

To start this sonnet lesson I explained that some poems have rules, which piqued the attention of a couple poets in the room right away. We’ve been writing together as a group for almost two years now and in that time I’ve pretty much let them free write, the exceptions being group projects like our holiday cookie tags, so this was something new.

I had Sonnet and the numbers one through fourteen listed downward on the board as a visual for everyone to reference. I decided to start with the basic rule, that a sonnet is a poem with fourteen lines. While rhyme and meter play a big role in the Shakespearean Sonnet (which is the form I was basing this introduction on) it didn’t quite feel right to dive into that. I wanted this to be a challenge for the poets, but not overwhelm them. Furthermore, I wanted them to be engaged and intrigued and bogging them down with all the details of form would have dimmed the excitement.

on a white dry erase school board the word Sonnet is written at the top with a vertical stack of numbers 1-14 underneath it. All the writing is in blue.

Next I talked about the theme, sonnets are about someone or something you really like. I got a lot of “blehs” from this as the thought of writing a love poem, or “love letter” as one of the poets said, was off putting. I told them though that it didn’t have to be addressed to someone, it could simply be fun and addressed to a video game the loved, a show, a book, anything is sonnet worthy.

Once that was established and no one felt like they had to write a love poem, the poets set to work and it was amazing! They tackled the challenge so well! Even the poet who was so opposed to writing “love letters” started with Sonic, but ended with an amazing ode to family, friends, and school.

One note, I started off just letting them free write, but it became quickly apparent that encouraging the poets to number one to fourteen down the side of their paper (like I had up on the board) provided a good frame of reference. Aside from this addition to their papers and occasional encouragement from the teachers and therapists supporting the group not much scaffolding took place.

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Class Environment

A big consideration in prepping for the workshops is the class environment, or how things are arranged and set up in the room to best support student learning.

One important component of design for the sessions I run is a circular structure.

I do this because I want the poets to be able to reference one another. The social-emotional and self-expressive aspects of these workshops are just as important as the academic and in order to facilitate these empathic aspects I need to set up the room in a way that promotes communication between poets.

A circle of classrrom chairs, black and one blue, on a tiled floor. In the middle of the circle of chairs is a smaller circle of colored cards. In the foreground is a classroom dry-erase whiteboard.

For example, in my younger workshops where I use the movement cards I put the circle of cards in the center of the larger seating circle. This gives each poet a kind of performance for their turn and then I still keep an open space for writing on the board, trying to keep it so that the poem is a kind of part of the circle.

I like to keep the room clear as well, nothing but the seating and activity.

It’s important to note as well, that teachers, therapists, and other facilitators are sitting (or standing in the case of other workshops) with the poets. This equanimity in seating is twofold in that it’s a visual representation of the fact that all voices are valued, student voice on the same tier as adult voice, and it allows for seamless 1:1 support. Whether that support is because a therapist is using this session as a group mandate and needs to work in close capacity to fulfill goals or because a poet needs sensory support in a moment of challenge, this set up makes it so that there are no dramatic/run across the room/jump in the middle of the activity/ stop everything situations that arise.

It’s pretty simple, but taking small considerations can make big improvements in peer learning.

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Sensory Supports

Working with a population of learners who have a wide array of sensory needs means adapting the classroom space to meet those individual needs. As I reflect on this past semester I wanted to create a little list of some easy sensory supports to include as part of a workshop, or classroom, environment.

 One easy thing is alternative seating like a yoga ball. The bouncing of the yoga ball can help offer input for students to be more attentive and engaged in the lesson. The one difficulty is sometimes everyone wants a turn to sit on the ball, whether it’s right for their sensory system or not, so establishing it as special seat for an individual student right from the get-go is important. 

Tiled classroom with a white board. Black chairs arranged in a half-circle around the white board. In the middle of the chairs is a teal yoga ball intended to be a seat. On the board can be seen some writing.

Another easy tool is a weighted blanket, providing deep pressure to help students remain seated and regulated who might otherwise want to move around to seek sensory input. I’ve found there isn’t as much temptation from other students around these blankets, so it’s a nice, low impact addition to the classroom space.

The student it’s intended for can keep it on their body, take it off when it’s their turn to go to the board and then put it back over them or have a staff put it over them as the other poets take their turns.

Teal and dark blue weighted blanket sitting on top of a black chair in a tiled classroom.

Another, subtler and smaller form of deep pressure are hand squeezes to rhythm. A colleague of mine offers this to a poet in one of the rhythm and movement based workshops I run. It’s a simple tactile cue that helps the poet stay attuned to the group activity while also giving their body a bit of support.

For the workshops that are doing writing on paper rather than the white board I like to offer writing utensils that have different sizes and textures. This way every poet should be able to find a tool that fits comfortably in their hand.

Clear mason jar of writing utensils on a tiled classroom floor. The Jar has plastic ball point pens with both smooth and rough grips, pens with cardboard wrapping, regular sized pencils, and giant pencils.

These are a few ideas I have, but I’d love to hear what else is out there and what other artists and educators use in their spaces!

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Snowball Dialouge

New article over in Whale Road Literary Review on “Snowball Dialouge” a writing technique I’ve used with students in the Sensorimotor Poetry Workshops.

While this article talks specifically about moments of peer learning in the workshop space, I've also used this as a strategy to help communicate and co-regulate with students in the day-to-day as well.

It's a good back pocket tool for any educator!

Black text on a white background. The top has the masthead for Whale Road Review with four lines right aligned indicating an online drop down menu. Below that masthead is the start of the article with “Snowball Dialogue” in bold, black title lettering and the article lettering beginning in paragraph form below.

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Edupreneur: Productivity Plan

One of the hardest transitions to entrepreneurship for me was keeping a consistent schedule. I consider myself a pretty self-motivated person, but I still found it easy to waste whole chunks of time on the days I didn’t have workshops booked. Whether doing something actually unproductive, like scrolling through Twitter, or spending an inordinate amount of time on something that’s productive, but not directly related to my businesses, like photo editing for blogs or planning an instagram story.

I wanted to think about how I spent my days and figure out if there was a smarter way for me work. I decided I’d build daily itineraries for myself and be my own personal assistant for a bit.

I would schedules parts of the day for deep work like writing blogs, curriculum planning, and workshop prep. Other parts for meeting and communicating with clients. And still other parts for media work and less mentally intense effort.

But before I did that I wanted to know: when should these things happen? What’s the optimal time for each of those activities?

To help answer that question, I found this chart from UNC-Chapel Hill that would allow me to keep track of what I do, when, during the day.

While it starts at 8am, and I often wake up before that, I just tracked those first hours separately. It was a big time save for me to find a pre-made chart! If you’re adept at making spreadsheets and know all the short cuts, you could just as easily make your own with a broader time range.

Chart on white background with black writing and lines. The title is in large bold letters reading “Weekly Planner (30min intervals) and on the right most end of the header is a “Week of” area with a line for the user to write the dates. The cahrt is broken up across a week Monday- Sunday horizontally and vertically listing times from 8:00am to 12:30am in half-hour intervals.

I took a week to journal every half half, listing out everything did in that block of time.

What I found was really interesting! Admittedly, for the first two days I think just knowing I was journaling made me a bit more productive, but by Wednesday I had fallen back into old habits and the data I collected on myself proved useful.

For example, my most productive writing time is between 8am and 11am, so I decided I would front end my days with deep work in that morning slot and make sure to schedule meetings and client calls for the afternoon when, as my data showed me, I’m more restless and distracted so it’d be a good time for me to travel for a meeting or set up a phone call.

This is still very much a work in progress for me, but charting my habits has helped me optimize my days. Not necessarily to do more, but to respond to the way my body and mind (or attention span) prefer to operate and in doing so, ensuring that I’m doing quality work in for all the different aspects of Donnie Welch Poetry.

Try it yourself for a week and comment with any surprising results you find!

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Mural Poem

I’m finishing up my Fall partnership with PS 73 through the Bronx Museum and wanted to reflect on one of the final projects I did with a class there. The idea sprung from a conversation with a fellow Teaching Artist at the museum who had done a negative space project. They covered paper with tape to form various letters and shapes then after the paint dried had students remove the tape to reveal what was left in the white space covered by the tape.

I thought this could be a great project to display the final, collaborative praise poem that one of the classes made. In this way it would allow the letters to be the student’s own work without any writing or re-writing from the adults to help with clarity.

I started by tracing some letters on thick construction paper and cutting these letters out to be arranged into words on a piece of mural paper. Once the words were formed I taped them down securely so that they’d stay in place while getting painted over.

Three letter “E” “S” “E”on blue construction paper. One of the letters is an outline in sharpie, the other two are yellow stencils. The sharpie is seen in the top left corner of the paper.

Gray work table with stencils, scissors, construction paper, sharpie. The stencils are organized alphabetically at the top of the table, the other supplies at the bottom.

Eventually, I smartened up a bit and realized that I could arrange the letters in a way that would both save paper and time by using the very edges of construction paper.

Sharpie outlines of letters on blue construction paper. The letters come to the edges of the paper.

Even this didn’t save me that much time though! This was an incredibly time intensive project! If I didn’t have the resources of the Bronx Museum at my disposal, I’m not sure I would have accomplished the vision. Not only was the abundance of high quality supplies important, but I had to recruit the help of the museum’s Education Intern to help finish the prep work.

If a parent or teacher reading wants to try something like this, I’d recommend doing it on a smaller scale! For example: maybe only doing four or five words or (if you want to get form specific) doing a haiku. The time needed for the prep on a large scale mural like this is unrealistic for what teachers are provided and for the time I imagine most parents have on top of their responsibilities.

Another thought would to get the poets involved in the tracing and cutting of the letters rather than have it be prepped. The way the timing worked out in my partnership didn’t really allow for it this season, but the more the poets are involved in the structuring and refining of their own work the better. Plus all the tracing and cutting is amazing fine motor work!

Large white mural paper. “These Are'“ spelled out at the top in blue letters cut from the construction paper. Below there are more pieces of paper with tracings and a pile of letters cut out not yet organized into words.

The next step was bringing it from the museum workspace into the museum classroom at the school. This involved me walking through a busy and blustery Grand Concourse, with the paper folded, hopping none of the letters slipped off and blew away to get crunched under morning rush hour traffic!

Fortunately, Patrick, the Bronx Museum Education Director, let me use some of the special mural paper the museum has on hand for their teen programs. This paper is made to withstand both a lot of media and material son it and some weathering. It’s composed of paper and cotton pulp and it feels soft to the touch, but is nearly impossible to tear. Part of the fun of this project was taking sensory, tactile, time at the start of the session to simply introduce and explain the material to the poets after they had all felt the paper and taken guesses about what gave it that texture.

White mural paper with the poem in blue construction paper letters laid out on tables covered in plastic. The poem reads “These are / our favorite / things in / class 303 / Singing / Dancing / Drawing / Math / And running / playing Minecraft / call of duty / PS4 / and Fun”

The painting got a little (maybe lotta) bit messy. I should have come prepared with some smocks, but in all the excitement over the scale of the project it had totally slipped my mind! Rookie mistake! The poets weren’t particularly bothered by it, but their teacher’s were a little concerned over how some of the parents might react to paint covered clothes.

One of the teachers suggested rather than using brushes and giving every poet a spot of the poster, to have them take turns with paint rollers which I thought was a really wonderful idea and something I’ll implement when doing this project again. While there’s something fun about the unevenness of the paint, having a more linear structure from the pattern of the roller could be a cool effect and the class management side of turn taking with only 2 or 3 rollers is also appealing. The trick would be keeping poets not painting equally engaged and a part of the group activity. Perhaps a challenge for the Spring!

Poem laid out on the tables, but now the white mural paper is covered in various layers of paints: black, green, blue, pink, brown, red, and yellow. The blue construction paper letters have been removed so that now the letters come through from the empty space, white gaps on the mural paper. The poem reads The poem reads “These are / our favorite / things in / class 303 / Singing / Dancing / Drawing / Math / And running / playing Minecraft / call of duty / PS4 / and Fun”

After drying, the mural was hung in the museum class space and recited as part of a performance for the entire grade. The poets also have an opportunity to read it at the museum as part of a closing ceremony for the exhibit we visited.

If you’re interested in trying this with your own poets I’ve supplied the list of materials below. As I mentioned, I was making use of some higher end museum supplies, so the list has the basic materials with no prices attached. Be aware that when using poster paper or butcher paper paint might bleed through and cause tears so make sure your poets don’t go as thick as some of mine! Also, keep in mind that different paints will have different results. I was using specific mural paints purchased by the museum, what’s available to you might apply and dry differently.

Materials:

• Reference poem (what you’ll be painting)

• Traceable Letters / Stencils

• Construction Paper

• Scissors

• Tape

• Paint

• Poster Paper

• Large table and/or work space

The poem hanging up on a brick school wall. Other pieces of art from other projects surround it: individual drawings and crafted ladders. The paint colors (red, blue, brown, black, yellow, green) have dried. The poem reads “These are / our favorite / things in / class 303 / Singing / Dancing / Drawing / Math / And running / playing Minecraft / call of duty / PS4 / and Fun”

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Workshopping the Workshop

Today marked the start of a new project with one of the workshops. Rather than building a collaborative poem off of a few lines from each poet, we're writing, revising, and (eventually) publishing full, individual poems.

Image of a poem written in black marker on a school white board. Photo editing has given everything a slight burnt tint. The poem’s title says “Tornado Brain” by Donnie. Parts of the poem are circled in orange, and brown other lines have writing around them in blue and purple ink.

Before summer break, every poet wrote a full piece on the prompt Tornado Brain, myself included. In introducing the idea of editing and revising I wanted to use my work rather than make any one post feel picked out. This not only takes away the anxiousness of having a poem critiqued, but it gives me the chance to model, as facilitator, the way to accept and process feedback. It also allows the poets to tackle this new subject as a group and use the collaborating, social skills they have in place from the group writing projects.

The idea of finding something to change was initially off putting to some of the poets and, admittedly, I don't know what I would have done in school if a teacher gave me a lesson saying, "okay, what would you change about this poem I wrote?" Two strategies I found that worked: asking the poets to identify what they like and have them circle it and asking them to make additions to the text.

Circling was a good entry way into the text because once they showed me what they liked they were more equipped to talk about what they didn't. Whether that's because it helped them identify their preferences or because it's socially easier to give someone a compliment sandwich, I'm not sure.  In either case, it helped lead to productive conversations and, as you can tell in the picture, even the circled favorite of one poet proved an area of critique for another.

In asking for additions instead of changes, a couple poets were able to interact with the text and give it a personal sense of completion.  Once the additions were made, it was easier to talk about the full text, including their suggested additions. The explanations for why their additions made sense often highlighted elements of the piece they did or didn't like and served as nice opportunities for myself, other facilitators, and peer poets in the room to interject or agree.

Another technique that seemed to work for this lesson was having  every student use their own color marker at the start. While some overlap eventually happened (best laid plans...) this was nice while it lasted! It not only let me see the work of each individual poet, but it made it easy for them to see what each other thought and, in turn, to respond to each other's comment. Next time I'll try and keep the colors a little more carefully coordinated!

After the success of this, I was hoping the poets would be ready to edit their own pieces, but that was definitely a rushed thought. The poets hesitated and rightfully so. Not only is this something new, but it's something a lot scarier than any reading and/or writing exercise we've done. I think workshops are scary! I just know that the end result is a much better, tighter draft and these poets need to see that pay off before they put themselves out there.

I was focused on having this be a summer project, ending with a summer school publication, but I need to step back and enjoy the process. Next session I'm planning to bring my revisions so that they can see how I've accepted their changes and maybe I'll have them go at it again to get some more practice in and, hopefully, see that it can be a good thing to have other poets read and interact with your work.

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Supports for Nonverbal Poets

When I present about the workshops, people often ask how I support students with limited verbal skills. Here are three examples of tools I've used or am using.

White board with black expo marker writing. The writing is broken up into three columns. From left to right: Setting, Plot, Character. There’s handwriting under each column. Setting clearly reads “Sleepy Hollow.” The writing under Plot is more difficult to read. And Character has “Ichabod, Katrina, Brom, Headless Horseman”

"Setting / Character / Plot" is a chart for one of my reading groups. In the session, a student with developmental and emotional needs feels more comfortable writing out ideas than sharing aloud (often asking that no one watches while they write). I created this chart for the group to fill out together at the start of every session, giving all the readers in the group an opportunity to share their knowledge of the story and review it as a whole rather than putting any one of them on the spot.

Brown Butcher paper with writing and drawing in black, green, purple, and blue expo marker. The first part of the title is censored in black but the next two words read “Idea Board” the handwriting is difficult to read as are a lot of the drawings, though some are clearly of animals like a Guinea Pig and Turtle.

"Idea Board" is a space for a poet with limited verbal skills, but who is often more regulated while drawing and writing. The poster paper's size gives them the opportunity to share their thoughts and contributions with the whole workshop while remaining more grounded and engaged.

On a school white board a chart is written in black expo marker. The chart has two rows and four columns. The title of the chart is “Movement Word Wall” The top row reads from left to right: “Fast Skip Run Left” with each of those words in their own column. The bottom row reads from left to right: “Slow Walk March Right” with each of those words in their own column.

"Movement Wall" is for a poet who uses a device to communicate. During a specific  movement activity I set up this world wall for them to go and tap (currently working to get the words programmed in) like they would their device to make their choice. This is also a nice visual cue for poets in the group who, while able to verbally communicate, might have difficulties coming up with movement ideas.

These are just a start and have had various successes and failures, if you test these out I'd love to hear how they work in your groups and how you've tweaked them to meet the needs of your students!

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