Writing (and Reading) with purpose!

It’s our second week for the LEAP Program at Seymour Dual Language Academy and the kids are getting into the rhythm of our day. We integrate reading and writing for real purposes throughout the day so that kids will see that literacy matters.  

Students gather around Ms. Claire during breakfast.

Breakfast and Letter Writing

We begin the day with breakfast – a casual time during which friends reconnect. This is a time when children also write letters to one another and to their teachers, their parents, and others. (We had one child write a letter to the zoo after our field trip last week.)

A student mails a letter in our class mail box.  Later in the day, a democratically elected letter carrier (one of the kids!) will deliver the letters to their recipients.  Each letter is in an envelope, with a "stamp" in the upper right corner.  (We use stickers for stamps.)

Book Club

During book club, students read high quality trade paperbacks and discuss the stories and the writing done by the authors. When discussing Apt. 3, by Ezra Jack Keats, a student told me that he likes it when an author leaves it to the reader to figure out what is happening in a story or how a character is feeling, rather than just saying something. For example, when Sam lingers by Betsy’s door, this student figured out that Sam might have a crush on her – and he loved that Mr. Keats got that message across by describing Sam’s actions, rather than just saying, “Sam had a crush on Betsy.” Thinking this way about books will help our students be better writers themselves.

Students read Jaden Toussaint, the Greatest: The Search for Screen Time in a book club.  Students are given the choice of three different books and pick the story that interests them the most.

Problem-Solving

As I mentioned in the previous post, the students are also working on solving some pretty big problems: the problem of bullying and the problem of gun violence. Again, the students write with a real purpose and use the letter format to convey their ideas. Students in the gun violence group are writing drafts of letters to our Senators and Representative. One child details in his letter the impact of gun violence in his own life. Let’s hope our government officials will listen to this passionate young people!

A student poses with the beginning of his letter to Sen. Schumer, asking that AR-15s be banned.  Pride in their work makes us so happy!

And we're off! Week One of the Summer Program

It's a delight to be back at Seymour Dual Language Academy with a curious group of kids working on reading, writing, and changing the world.  Each morning we have Book Club where children choose what book they would like to read in small groups and discuss.  We've already read a pile of books -- including Ling and Ting: Not Exactly the Same by Grace Lin, Apt. 3 by Ezra Jack Keats, Three Stories You Can Read to Your Dog by Sarah Swan Miller, Abuela's Birthday by Jacqueline Jules, The Boy Who Didn't Believe in Spring by Lucille Clifton, and Dancing in the Wings by Debbie Allen.  But by far the most popular book was This is Black Panther from Marvel.  The kids jumped into their Book Club discussion, comparing the book to the movie and imagining themselves as super heroes.    And they are super heroes.  The children have picked two important problems in their community to tackle this summer: gun violence and bullying.  They spend the second half of the morning researching the causes of those problems and what solutions have already been tried.  As the summer continues, they will develop their own solutions to those problems and work to get their solutions enacted.  Stay tuned for details as their work progresses! In addition to their work in Book Club and Problem Solving, the children are working to create a democracy in the classroom.  During Morning Meeting, they take turns being chair person, and facilitate discussions about future plans for the program.  So far, they have voted to use some time last Friday to make clay projects (they had a blast! – Pictures to come in the next blog post.)  They also voted that they will line themselves up alphabetically when they go out to recess or to lunch, each day moving the leader from the previous day to the end of the line.  They work for fairness in their decisions. There is so much going on in the classroom that I didn’t have time to take a lot of pictures.  I did get pictures when we went to the Rosamond Gifford Zoo on Wednesday.  These are amazing kids, learning and growing in a hundred ways!  Here they are learning about the reticulated python.