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School Visits to Prentiss Christian and Lawrence County High School
This past Thursday Sarah visited Prentiss Christian School and Lawrence County High School to promote teen writing contest, the theme for which is “Animals and/or Nature.” Students are encouraged to write either a short story about nature or a nonfiction essay about the theme. This contest is a partnership between The New Walden Writers Retreat and Environmental Arts Center and the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality with support from the Jefferson Davis and Lawrence County Soil and Water Conservation Districts and the Central MS RC&D Council. While at Prentiss Christian School Sarah gave a brief presentation on her books to introduce the students to the process of writing nature-focused non-fiction. She shared both Wolfsnail: A Backyard Predator and Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature, both of which are non-fiction books. Although her work is non-fiction, I noticed that while we were at St. Luke’s in Baton Rouge that her work seemed to unanimously inspire fiction work from the students. I wonder what it is about these scientific and mathematical concepts in nature that inspires us to write creatively?
Special thanks to Hope Daley of the Jefferson Davis County Soil & Water Conservation District and Mandy Callaway of the Lawrence County SWCD for organizing these visits, and another thanks to Chuck Jepsen and Laura Beiser of the Central MS Resource Conservation and Development Council for facilitating them! Hopefully the wonderful weather (and Sarah’s wonderful presentations) will inspire the students to get out and start writing about nature!
Finding Fractals in the Classroom
Hello! My name is Mary Schmidt, and I’m Sarah’s intern for the Spring. I’m a senior at Millsaps College, and while I don’t know much about children’s literature I’ve enjoyed my first month learning about it!
On February 5 Sarah and I left for Baton Rouge, LA to make a visit to St. Luke’s Episcopal School. While there Sarah presented her newest book, Mysterious Patterns: Finding Fractals in Nature, to Mrs. McIlwain’s fifth grade classes. The classes were both very welcoming and enjoyed learning about fractals (as well as some side facts about the wolfsnail!).
We arrived in Baton Rouge late Wednesday afternoon, just in time for a great dinner prepared by Julie Owen. After dinner Sarah showed me the ins and outs of the cameras that I would be using to film and take pictures with the next day. I’ve always appreciated photography, but I honestly did not know how much work went into the process (not to mention just setting the cameras up!). Thanks to Sarah’s husband Richard’s notes, though, I was able to set the camera up and even get a few good shots.
Sarah read the book from the F&Gs (folded and gathered, meaning the pages of the book without binding or a spine) to explain fractals to the classes. Each class had great questions about fractals — they were certainly a smart group of students. After reading the book Sarah led them through a fractal activity, one that she and Julie Owen will be presenting at the Fay B Kaigler Children’s Book Festival in Hattiesburg, MS on April 10. The classes had great fun with the project, and we found that it was a great way for them to express their creativity and use their imaginations while engaging in math and science.
Sarah also showed the classes some of the different drafts of the book, starting with the very first draft (see photo above). The classes were perhaps most interested in the process of writing a book, as they just finished a unit in which they wrote their own books. Based on their fractal projects I would not be surprised if there were a few potential authors in the class!
The visit was a huge hit (according to Julie’s son, Hobson), and Sarah, Julie, and I are all grateful to Mrs. McIlwain’s class for allowing us to visit! And a huge thanks to Julie and her family for hosting Sarah and me (an even bigger thanks for the delicious meals). We certainly appreciated it!
My Dedicated Critique Group
One way I work to make my manuscripts stronger is by test driving them with readers. With this book, I’ve gone back again and again to this select group of fourth graders at Davis Magnet IB World School. I worked with these students as third graders to make math story books. See post here. They’ve been giving me feedback this year on my fractal book.
I’ve had good suggestions from them, and from Beth West, who is the International Baccalaureate curriculum coordinator at Davis. Some are: use different color lines for each iteration in the tree fractal and use lungs as the fractal example from the human body. Some of their best feedback comes in the form of questions or comments. One said on Wednesday: I think this version is better because I didn’t really understand fractals before. Phew!
Visiting Bailey Middle
Today I visited an advanced 8th grade English class at Bailey Middle School. Mrs. Camille Magee, the teacher, taught my three sons at Chastain Middle School.
We made instant books and talked about the steps in the publishing process. We started with Wolfsnail: A Backyard Predator and spent some time on the new fractal book.
More than a few hands went up when I asked if any of them liked to write. What a great group!
Storytelling in Photography, Video, and Social Media
I joined Roderick Red and Jessica Simien on Friday for a presentation at Murrah High School for Mrs. Lynne Schneider’s newspaper/video production class. Rod, owner of Red Squared Productions, and I talked about our recent work together on the Friends of Hope Video project, and Jessica Simien and Rod talked about their collaborations for JessicaSimien.com, an entertainment and lifestyle blog.
All three of us have ties to Murrah High School. Rod and Jessica graduated five and six years ago. My three sons are students at Murrah. Rod was head of the photography department for the Murrah Hoofbeat, and was one of Mrs. Schneider’s students.
I know many of these students because I help with the Murrah Debate and Quiz Bowl teams, and they’ve been classmates of my boys for years. Here I was explaining how photographers use the “Rule of Thirds” to compose stronger images.
We divided the class into two groups and did two hands-on sessions: Rod facilitated the video session and I the still photography.
It always helps me as an artist when I teach. The students always ask great questions, which help me drill down into why I am doing what I am doing and make me consider how I could be more effective.
Visit to Saltillo Elementary
I spent two days last week at Saltillo Elementary School, visiting with all 4th grade students and leading a professional development session for teachers grades 3-5.
Everyone was very friendly and helped me work through a few technical glitches. Thank you, Maggie Dickson, fourth grade project director; Faye Bruce, librarian; Gena Yarbrough, district art specialist; Belinda McKinion, assistant principal; and Coke Magee, principal.
The students asked great questions, and were wonderful guides through the school as I made my way from classroom to classroom to sign books.
Once again, I brought along a wolfsnail and some prey snails. I also debuted the wolfsnail app in its trial format. The kids loved seeing the snail video.
Several teachers took the pictures I am posting here. Thank you.
Madison Avenue Upper Elementary Visit
I had a lovely time on Friday at Madison Avenue Upper Elementary School, visiting with third and fourth graders. The star of the show was the wolfsnail I brought along. A few dozen students would have taken it home in a heartbeat.
Ansleigh Thornhill, the MAUE media specialist, took the photographs for this post. Thank you for inviting me, Ansleigh.
Using Digital Photography to Illustrate Math Stories
I’ve been so busy with students I haven’t had much time to blog. We are in the final stage of our bookmaking, and the books look great. The third graders did a terrific job!
Students created stories in the broad categories of patterns and measurement. We had six groups of students. Four groups had four students each, and two groups had three students each. The groups worked together to brainstorm, write, storyboard, and take photographs.
After an initial visit, during which I talked about my Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature (read about it here), Beth West worked with the students to talk about what all math stories need. Together, she and the students developed a checklist. The group writing was a challenging part of this project. In order to facilitate the process, Beth and I worked with each group for about an hour — to help integrate disparate drafts and press for coherence in the math methods being deployed.
We spent the next full school day, working individually with groups to storyboard the photographs and then take them.
After the photographs were taken, we asked the groups to self-select for four tasks: chartist (to create any chart needed for an illustration on good paper), folder (to make the instant book out of the good paper), assembler (to order, trim, and glue photographs into the book), and scribe (to write the final text into the book). So, on our final two work days, we worked with groups according to their tasks. All six folders made their books at the same time. All the chartists made charts at the same time, etc.
This final picture is of the classroom teacher, Mrs. Lieb. She has been very patient with Beth and me as we invaded her classroom. Here she is enjoying reading one of the books for the first time. Thank you, Mrs. Lieb.
Patty Crosby took all but two of the photographs in this post. She also had the task of capturing the whole project on video. Thank you, Mom!
Thank you, also, Beth.
More Photographs by Davis Students
This is my 500th blog post, a milestone I could hardly have imagined back in August 2007 when I launched this blog. Given my twin passions for teaching and photography, it is fitting that today’s post should showcase photographs by fourth graders I’ve been teaching. These images were all taken at the Mississippi Museum of Art in the Art Garden, using Kodak Easy Share cameras. If you want to see a photo displayed larger, just click on it.
If you want to read more about this project, check out this blog post by Elizabeth Williams, curator of education at the museum. Her post features photographs of students.
Putting Plans Into Action
I mentioned last week that I’m working with the Mississippi Museum of Art and Davis Magnet School to develop a lesson plan that will get students engaged in science, writing, photography, and art. I’ve been working with Elizabeth Williams, curator of education at the museum; Jalisha Cross and Jordan Gunther, the two fourth grader teachers at Davis; and Beth West, the IB Coordinator at Davis.
Photographs of planning meetings are never very exciting, but we did good work that day. We made books, practiced nature journaling, set up dates for further contact sessions with students. These include times when I will guide the students in photographing the museum’s garden and when Ginger Williams Cook, the museum’s master teaching artist, will guide two sessions on creating watercolors from sketches in their nature journals.
During the final week before the break, I visited both fourth grade classes to introduce the lesson and to talk about my book, Wolfsnail: A Backyard Predator.
