Music is often the catalyst I need to jump start my own writing for the day. I choose my playlists based on subject matter. For example, when I’m working on my young adult manuscript, I listen to the edgier contemporary artists. I add a layer to my listening criteria depending on my protagonist; if it’s a male character, I’ll choose male vocalists, and if it’s a female, I’ll pick female artists. The music provides a rhythm and a flow by which my words form their own rhythm and make music on the page, only in words.

Music can trigger a memory that will in turn add authentic realism to the words on the page. Music can also inspire a certain mood. For example, upbeat tunes will likely bring pep to your writing. The opposite is also true. Listening to melancholy songs brings out the sadness in my characters’ lives.

As a classroom teacher and now as a private tutor, I’m always striving for ways to help my students find inspiration to write. The blank page is especially daunting for young writers learning the writing process. The page gets bigger and whiter the longer it goes without words. When I’m stuck behind my writer’s block and inspiration to write is lacking, I turn on my music and watch the words dance onto my paper. I do the same for my students when they’re faced with writer’s block, too.

Bringing music into your writing lessons is simple to do and doesn’t cost anything extra. The following are a few ideas to help get you started:

Lower Elementary Students

For the younger students, I suggest selecting music for the whole class to listen to. Classical or New Age music—basically anything without lyrics—provides a good place to start. The students can focus on the sounds the instruments are creating and, in turn, the mood of the music.

One of my favorites is the FANTASIA soundtrack. The music is generally recognized by the students and sounds lively and adventurous. On a piece of poster paper, you and your students can brainstorm adjectives and adverbs to describe the mood of the music. They can then use that list of words in their stories. This is a simple lesson but one that will jump-start your students’ writing on a positive note.

For Middle Grade Students and Older

I like to give my students choices in what they want to write about so with that comes choosing the music they want to listen to while they write. As long as the lyrics are kid-friendly, I’m game. When I taught in the classroom my school didn’t have fancy audio visual equipment. I only had my good ol’ boom box that played CDs and cassette tapes. I was limited to choosing one particular artist and then switching CDs and tapes. Today, teachers have more options with playlists on iPods and MP3 players. You can even create your playlists to reflect and inspire the genre of writing you want your students to write.

Just yesterday I was working with a student who wanted to write a story about how she convinced her parents to get her a cell phone. She brought a favorite mix of artists on a CD—her mother told me she was getting the phone but not an iPod (yet). I cued the mix up on my computer and my student went right to work on a realistic fiction story. This is a student who is not fond of putting pencil to paper. Still, throughout the session she wrote nonstop, except to look up words in a dictionary to check her spelling. She told me the music helped to keep her motivated on her writing.

For Musician Students

Using music to inspire writing also works in the reverse. I have a student entering third grade. He is a very accomplished pianist and writes his own music, but he’s not too fond of writing words on paper. My student enjoys reading Shel Silverstein poems, so I asked him to pick a favorite and then write the music to go along with the poem. No problem! A week later, at our next session, he had a wonderful melody that perfectly matched the story in the poem.

Next, I asked him to play one of his favorite songs. Then I asked him to tell me the story that the music was telling. He verbally explained a beginning, middle, and end. Onward to our next assignment, which achieved my ultimate goal: to get him to write a story. I gave him the option of writing about an original song or to use one he already studies in his music lessons. He chose “Jazzy Toccatina” for his story. Here is what he wrote:


As you can see, my student outlined the plot into a beginning, middle, and end, as well as noting the location and characters. Without realizing it, he had written a story with words!

Music is a universal language. No matter what the mood you are feeling or trying to create, there is a melody to be heard and transposed into words.

Kathleen A. Hunter, MS is a literacy tutor and aspiring children's book author. You can visit her online at www.KathleenHunterWrites.com.



Teaching Tips: Bringing Children, Dogs, and Books Together

What happens when three colleagues in a professional learning community want to talk about the same book, but live hundreds of miles apart? The answer is an event we like to call #cyberPD. This year, our now annual #cyberPD event ran through much of July.

The event began spontaneously last year when Jill Fisch of My Primary Passion, Laura Komos of Camp Read-a-Lot, and I were sharing our stacks of planned professional summer reading on our blogs. When we realized we had similar books in our stacks, we thought it might be interesting to discuss the books together. Since we do not live close enough to make coffee and conversation possible, we decided to discuss the books across our blogs. Using Twitter as our main tool for communication, we asked other colleagues if they’d like to join us. Before we knew it, we had a collaborative learning conversation growing across blogs.

This year our conversation doubled to more than 25 blogs chatting about Peter Johnston’s book, OPENING MINDS: USING LANGUAGE TO CHANGE LIVES (Stenhouse, 2012). Laura, Jill and I began by dividing the book into three discussable sections. Then we each hosted a week of conversation on our blog.

After reading each section colleagues could participate in the following ways:

• linking a blog reflection to the host blog
• leaving a comment on the host blog
• commenting on Twitter using the #cyberPD hashtag
• adding comments to our Wallwisher

Over three weeks, participants read the determined selection, shared their reflections, and then commented on one another’s blogs.

• July 11th—Chapters 1-3—Hosted by me at Reflect and Refine: Building a Learning Community
• July 18th—Chapters 4-6—Hosted by Jill Fisch at My Primary Passion
• July 25th—Chapters 7-9—Hosted by Laura Komos at Camp Read-a-Lot
• July 26th—Twitter Chat

Growing Conversations

In a #cyberPD reflection at Mentor Texts with Lynne and Rose, Rose Cappelli posted this comment about using this format for a professional learning conversation:

I had started reading OPENING MINDS a few months ago, but felt I really needed to talk to someone about it. Although I knew many others who were reading it, there just wasn’t time for a lingering discussion. Being able to share ideas with so many outstanding professionals and incorporate the thinking of others into my thinking has most certainly helped me to deepen my understanding of the book.

Rose’s statement caught my attention as I’ve been trying to wrap my head around why #cyberPD works. I''ve read books on my own, participated in book talks at my school, and even chatted with others informally about professional reading. There is something about participating across blogs in this learning community that brings opportunities to stretch our thinking. Maybe it''s the opportunity to really "hear" what others think and to have time to thoughtfully consider their ideas. Maybe it''s the variety of individuals from around the globe. Maybe it''s the time to think about all that we''ve read and synthesize it in a way that we can share it with others. I''m not really sure. Peter Johnston reminds us:

Our ability to think alone is substantially dependent on our ability to think together. Individual minds are nurtured in the conversations - the interactive thinking - of the community (OPENING MINDS, p. 96).

This year’s #cyberPD conversation was a collaborative learning experience that evolved because of everyone’s expertise and participation. In addition to the posts written by participants and collected at Jog the Web, a Google.doc was started by Julie Balen to collaboratively collect language suggestions for our classrooms. Carol Wilcox has offered to host a final post at Carol’s Corner on Wednesday, August 1st for participants to synthesize their reflections, plan next steps, or share links to other related information.

Why Virtual Learning Communities?

Recently I was in a professional development session. It was the typical session with a speaker, notetaking, and listening alongside other colleagues in my district. We had four real walls and a door. There was a lot of great conversation when a friend asked, “Do you find you can have these kinds of conversations in your building?”

Her question caused me to pause for a moment. There was a time when this was the main network one might develop, a network at the building level. I realized, for the first time, I have cultivated a professional learning community beyond a local level that constantly has these educational conversations. Being part of a community that shares information and pushes my thinking helps me to improve the work I do every day with children in the classroom. Though I value my local network, my learning community has grown exponentially because of connections on Twitter, blogs, virtual book talks, and other social media networks.

My virtual community is passionate about education and learning. The book discussions on #cyberPD grew out of this community and a common interest. These educators are there any time of the day or night to discuss ideas, share resources, or help with a question. It seems, by reflecting online and reading the thinking of other participants, learning is magnified.

The benefits of virtual booktalks like the ones we have in #cyberPD include:

• Convenience: professional development from your couch—or anywhere
• Flexible schedule: work at your convenience
• Time to synthesize learning
• Places to respond to thinking of others
• Equal voices in conversation
• Multiple perspectives
• Benefit from the expertise of others

When we are gathered around a table in the same room for a professional reading conversation, it is sometimes true that the conversation is dominated by a few people in the group. When thinking is shared across blogs, everyone has an equal voice. No one voice dominates the conversation. Our understandings are deepened by the multiple perspectives of participants.

We can now think beyond traditional ways of participating in professional development opportunities. Though, as an educator, I do not have the money to attend every professional conference I would like to attend, through social connections on the Internet I am able to learn from others at any time. While adding a virtual component to a local book discussion would provide benefits in learning, the real benefit in these learning structures is our ability to connect to others from around the world who share our interests and passions.

The real benefit is in the powerful conversations we share.

Cathy Mere is a co-host of #cyberPD, Twitter addict, literacy advocate and participant in virtual learning communities. She is the author of MORE THAN GUIDED READING: FINDING THE RIGHT INSTRUCTIONAL MIX K-3 (Stenhouse, 2005). Her virtual home is Reflect and Refine: Building a Learning Community.



Summer Learning...for Free!

When I work with my middle school students as they conduct research projects, I find that often, their most pressing concern is to find out exactly how much (i.e. exactly how little) actual research they have to do in order to complete the assigned project. Of course, being the committed, diligent students we know middle school scholars to be, they explain that they don’t want to “waste” time doing research that they don’t need.

Ironically, as a writer of both fiction and nonfiction, I often find myself faced with the same dilemma, only from the other side. I love doing research and can easily get caught up in the joy of tracing an interesting anecdote or tracking down a fascinating tidbit. As research or writing projects stretch out longer than I expected, I often find myself worrying that I am “wasting” time doing research that I don’t need, or tinkering with writing that doesn’t need to be tinkered with.

Whenever I face this dilemma, however, I often comfort myself with the words and sentiment of Richard Bausch, in comments he contributed to a book about writing called OFF THE PAGE. Bausch, a professional writer, assures both the inexperienced and experienced writer that “nothing is wasted.” This simple phrase has become my mantra as I do research and as I write rough drafts and it is the response I use with my middle school students when they are wondering how much is too much.

In OFF THE PAGE, Bausch tells about the first thing he ever published, a short story. But unfortunately, when he started writing it, he thought he was writing a novel. And he kept writing that novel to the tune of eight hundred pages. And only after he had done all of that writing did he realize that he didn’t have an eight hundred page novel but instead, a short story of less than one hundred pages.

What did he do? He scraped most of his original work, whittling away the words until he found the story within.

Obviously, Bausch spent a lot of time writing those eight hundred pages. Obviously, it hurt to let them go. But as told himself, “Nothing is wasted.” All of the writing, thinking, and research that went into his 800-page novel was the necessary knowledge base he needed in order to create the story that he eventually wrote.

It is good to have the attitude that no research that you do is wasted, even the gathering of facts and information that isn’t put into your final piece. It is good to have the attitude that no writing that you do is wasted, even the writing that you have to throw away. This is an important mindset because it allows you, the researcher and the writer, the freedom, or maybe it is the courage, to take a risk and to invest time and energy and thought into tracking down information that might never get into your article or working on a piece of writing that may never get beyond a first draft. And even if that writing is eventually thrown away, even if that research doesn’t materialize, it pays off.

How?

Well, first of all, it is practice. Just as in sports, or music, or math, to get good at writing the writer needs to practice. A lot.

Secondly, if you believe that everything you write must be good, you won’t be willing to write something bad. And if you aren’t willing to write something bad, than you won’t risk experimenting with something new, or playing around in a new way with something old. You will be stuck writing the same thing over and over again because that is what you know how to do. As we know, it is a risk to step out of one’s comfort zone, but it is only outside of one’s comfort zone that one gets better and learns something new.

So, how does this thinking translate into the classroom, where you are limited by time and resources and student motivation? I believe that if you, the teacher, understand this concept and truly buy into this philosophy, you will automatically weave it into everything you do and teach in your writing classroom. It will help you, as the teacher, to keep your eye on the process more than, or at least as much as, the finished product. If you operate from this belief you will be more willing to encourage your students to take risks with their writing. You will say things like, “Have you ever thought about doing it another way? Try it and let’s compare the two versions and see which one you like better.” You will reward students who attempt something new even if their attempt isn’t a success. You will know that sometimes even though the writing is not a success, taking the risk always is. You will model this risk taking yourself when you show your students your mistakes or how you played around with a story, telling it from different perspectives or using a variety of formats.

Another way to weave this philosophy into your writing classroom is to design assignments that encourage students to do more writing than they actually need to complete the assignment that is being handed in. For instance, novelists often write biographies for each of their main characters or write about events or situations that don’t take place in the story, so they know the whole back story for each character before they get started. You could require something like this to be handed in along with the finished fiction project.

When I’m writing nonfiction and I get stuck, I often take a step back and write about my topic instead of working directly on it. For instance, when writing my picture book, MONET PAINTS A DAY, I wrote a reflection on Monet’s unswerving passion for his art, wondering on paper about where it came from and what fueled it. That, of course, morphed into a reflection on how I could create or follow my passions in my own everyday life, which then morphed into how to develop passion in my students. That thinking and wondering and writing eventually found its way back to my Monet biography in such subtle ways as my word choice when describing Monet’s work habits, and the facts that I decided to put in and those I chose to leave out.

This kind of additional writing for both fiction and nonfiction is important. Although the exact thoughts or words might never end up in the finished product, the additional thought and research adds depth to what you write because it adds depth to what you think about your topic or your story.

For me, “Nothing is wasted,” is a core belief I have that shapes my own writing and my teaching of writing. It is something that I hope comes through not only in the words I say but the choices I make, the ways I respond to my students and the assignments I give.

If you believe it, you teach it—and I believe it!

Julie Danneberg has taught reading and writing in both elementary and middle school. Currently she teaches 7th grade reading. In addition, Julie is the author of many books for children and young readers, including FIRST DAY JITTERS and her just-released picture book biography, MONET PAINTS A DAY. Visit her website at www.juliedanneberg.com.

Are you a teacher whose class is participating in the 2012 NaNoWriMo Young Writer’s Program or has in the past? We want to hear from you! Send us an email at engage-membership@reading.org.

Teaching Tips: The 'Fast and Furious' First Draft