Super Bowl Fun

Kids have passions.  One common one is sports.  I often try to encourage writing around a child's particular area of interest.  Starting with an image can be useful.  If you have a student who is really into football, try putting them side by side with their favorite player.  NFL Photo Booth allows you to take photos with NFL players, jerseys and gear.  It's free and just in time for the Superbowl frenzy.  Go Pats!

Picture Writing

Picturing Writing is an art-and-literature based approach to writing developed by Beth Olshansky to meet the needs of students with diverse learning styles.

They learn how to create pictures that tell a story and write words that paint pictures.

Students start by painting a picture with watercolor and crayon resist. Then they brainstorm to create rich vocabulary to use with their pictures, in essence learning to "read their pictures". The writing process involves visual, kinesthetic and verbal modes which makes the students' work come alive.

One of our third grade teachers just finished a project on "Time of Day". Visit the students' stories on display in the library and be amazed by the richness of the language and paintings!

In A Whole New Mind, Dan Pink introduces six essential abilities one needs to be successful in today's world, the Conceptual Age. Two of these are evident in the process of picture writing. One is "symphony", perceiving the big picture, recognizing patterns and seeing relationships. These third graders are becoming active observers, seeing their world in new ways. The second is "story", explaining the world with "context enriched by emotion". The student passages accompanying the paintings are descriptions full of feeling. Nurturing symphony and story will help our students prepare for whatever path they choose.

connection to occupational therapy - treating the "whole person", multisensory activities

Work With Wings

The Hosmer student blog, Work With Wings, is a place where students can share their ideas, interests and creations. Take a look at what these kids find interesting as they give their work wings to share with the world.

Please add a comment about their work...they love to read them!

Photo by gadjoboy/scott from flickr

Creating Comics as Story Writing

Do you want to get you students excited about writing? Here is a great free resource mentioned by the tech chicks in their recent podcast. It is an online educational comic generator called makebeliefscomix.com.

First, you can choose the # of panels in your comic strip. The two panel option can represent a First-Then structure for younger students.




The three panel option can represent a beginning-middle-end structure. Older students can add more detail with the four panel option.





Next you choose the characters and their mood.








Finally, you write their words and thoughts. Each panel gives you a dialog prompt.

This is very easy to use. Click here, click there to drop characters into frames. Now you are ready to tell your story. There is even a list of story ideas to get started.

I love this because it is so flexible. It can be used to create a simple cause-effect story. At the same time, it can call on higher order thinking skills. The tech chicks suggested making a current event into a comic. This involves summarization, reframing, evaluation and making judgements.

Start now to tap into your students' creativity. To see a sample, check out the Hosmer student blog post, How to Appreciate Teachers.

How Can Grammar Be This Cool?

By now, I hope you have explored some free podcasts through the iTunes store. Perhaps you stumbled upon this one. Grammar Girls Quick and Dirty Tips are short, informative and entertaining grammar tidbits that we all have wondered about. She discusses a range of topics, from the apostrophe catastrophe to sentence fragments running amuck. The episodes are an average of 5 minutes in length. There may be one you want to play for your students...or maybe there is an issue you want clarified.

This resource will have a positive effect on your students' writing...or is it affect? I'm going to listen to the episode titled "Grammar Affects Me" and I'll get back to you!

National Handwriting Day 2007

How did we miss it this year? In case you are curious, National Handwriting Day was celebrated on January 23, John Hancock's birthday.

From







To






Handwriting has gone down hill since old John was alive. Go to this site of presidential signatures and scroll down from George Washington to George Bush. What do YOU think?

I think If George Bush was a student at Hosmer School, he would get referred for an occupational therapy screening...same goes for Bill Clinton!

Voices from the Students

Do you ever wonder what kids would do if they ran the school? Well, here is one fifth grader's idea:

Me as Principal

What would I do if I were principal of Hosmer School? To begin with, I would be nice to the kids. I would give them what they need. Also, I would make a shorter school day. It would be three hours long. Finally, there would be more science and more experiments. For example, I would show them experiments on electricity. It would be good for kids if I were principal of Hosmer School.

Hear your writing!

Microsoft Word enables you to have text in Word documents read aloud. When using the computers in the library and computer room, simply make sure the Speech toolbar is displayed.

1. On the View menu, click on Toolbars and then click Speech.
2. Select (highlight) the text that you want Word to speak.
3. On the Speech toolbar, click Speak Selection.
4. To stop Word from speaking the text, click Stop Speaking.
(under system preferences, you can change rate of speech and choose different voices)

Why use this? There are a variety of educational applications:

- Students can listen to their writing as part of the editing process. It is common to misread what we have recently wrote, filling in what we intended to say rather than reading what is actually on the computer screen. Having the computer read it allows us to hear the text exactly as it was written and make corrections.
- Students can practice spelling words through another sensory channel. They type their spelling word then type the word a second time with a space between each letter. The computer will read the word first, then read it letter by letter. You may want to slow down the rate of speech for this task.
- Struggling readers can access information on the internet, even if the text is above their reading level. Copy and paste articles of interest into a Word document. Now they can listen to the information. Buy the way, TIME FOR KIDS is online in digital format..allow kids to "listen" if they are not on reading level.

National Handwriting Day

Today is National Handwriting Day, in celebration of John Hancock's birthday. Take part by writing a note to someone in your own personal script. Have your students put extra effort into their handwriting today. Create an oversized birthday card to John Hancock and have each member of your class write an anonymous message in their best handwriting. Let the class try to guess the author of the message based on the handwriting alone.

If you think handwriting is a lost skill in the age of computers, think again! High school students taking the SATs are now required to hand write a two page essay in 25 minutes. This requires thinking and writing quickly! Handwriting is not counted, but it does have to be legible in order to be scored.

In school, writing by hand is one of the most common ways we expect students to demonstrate their acquired knowledge. Making it an automatic and effortless skill is essential in order for students to concentrate on the content of what they are expressing. Unfortunately, many students struggle with this basic task. Here is a nice exercise to experience "graphomotor" difficulty. Imagine how it may interfere with school performance. Go to : http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/misunderstoodminds/experiences/writingexp1a.html

The Family Corner - pencil skills

Would you like to improve your child's pencil skills in just minutes a day? Before starting homework, try a few Pencil Olympics (see School Function Quick Tip below). If you would like a handout, send a note to your teacher and we will send one home.

The School Function Quick Tip - pencil olympics

Pencil Olympics!

No need for fancy items to practice hand skills needed for writing. Use the common everyday pencil! Pencil Olympics are few quick exercises to do before a writing task with the whole class. They include skiing (walking up and down your pencil with your fingers), the flying camel (rotating the pencil in the air), and weight lifting (straightening and bending fingers as you hold the pencil). Are you curious to see the "triple flip" and the "balance beam"? Come by room 213 and get a handout from Lynda or Beth. We guarantee your students will write longer and more efficiently if you schedule this in your day.

Cool School Tool - golf pencil

Little Pencils for Little Hands
Have you ever tried to write with one of those BIG souvenir pencils? It's pretty unwieldy, isn't it? Well, that's basically how it feels when you put a big primary pencil or a long #2 pencil in the hand of a small child. Have them use a short golf pencil instead. Give them a small hand-held pencil sharpener to sharpen it. It's a great activity to improve hand skills.