A first for this feature: a joint interview with two education professionals! I am so grateful to Dr. Terrell Young (now at BYU) for introducing me to Andrea Patterson and Nicki Blake, a dynamic duo from eastern Washington.
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| Nicki (l), Andrea (r) |
Nicki is District
Coordinator of Early Childhood, ACES, Parent Involvement, and Advancement Via
Individual Determination (AVID).
Andrea is currently teaching second grade at White Bluffs
Elementary in Richland WA. Like our featured guest from last week, these two women are passionate about poetry, especially something called "poetry breaks." I think a cafe au lait would be the perfect drink to sip while reading this interview. Enjoy!
Our custom here is to peek into the past.
Favorite school lunch as a kid:
Nicki: Definitely the cheese zombie and tomato soup. Cheese zombies were a little like
toasted cheese sandwiches, but they were baked and dripping with melted cheese. I liked to dip my cheese zombie into
the tomato soup!
Andrea: Boy, that’s a
tough one. I really liked the “pup
in a blanket”, the mashed potatoes and gravy but I think I would have to go
with the chili and cinnamon rolls!
I can remember pouring a little milk in my chili and devouring my
cinnamon roll. In fact it still is
my favorite school lunch.
Best friend in grade school:
Nicki: I spent my
grade school years on a competitive gymnastics team that did a lot of
traveling. My two best friends
were on the gymnastics team with me. Their names were Nancy Pence and Jennifer
Carstens.
Andrea: I had a lot of
grade school friends and we played house with our dolls. However, my friends, Becky Woodford and
Jennifer Pope, from middle school are still my friends today.
Times you were the new kid in
school:
Nicki: I was lucky
because I lived in the same house my whole life. I went to only one elementary school, one Junior High
School, and one High School. When
I was entering school as the new kid, I had lots of other kids who were also
new. That doesn’t mean I didn’t
worry A LOT about the first day of school, having a new teacher, and fitting
into a new class each year.
Andrea: I too was
lucky because I only had to be the “new kid” once in my life, and it was in
kindergarten. The hardest part of
that was I loved my kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Barton. But when I moved in the middle of the
year my new teacher wasn’t as nurturing and I was sure she didn’t like me.
Teacher who inspired you to
stretch:
Nicki: I was really
shy when I was younger. So shy, that I would hardly speak. I have a twin brother who was very
outgoing. During my primary years,
my brother would do a lot of the talking for me. In third grade, I had a teacher named, Mrs. Peterson. She was the first teacher I really felt
built an extra kind and caring classroom environment that allowed me to come
out of my shell and take some risks as a learner. In third grade, I took off as a reader, learned cursive, and
gained some confidence in math.
Andrea: I loved
school! Reading was hard for me
and I can remember being in the low group. I was a super speller and math was definitely my
strength. My first grade teacher,
Mrs. Hester, really stretched my mathematical thinking and she made me believe
that I could solve any problem. Another
teacher that inspired me was Mrs. Peters, my sixth grade teacher. She was the best. It was her first year as a
teacher and she took us on two or three field trips. One of them was to Cannon Beach, Oregon. I would have done anything she asked
because of the relationships that she built with her students.
The one thing you always wished you
could do in grade school but never achieved:
Nicki: I devoted many
hours a week to gymnastics with the hope of competing on the United States
Gymnastics Team. That never
happened! I worked hard, met a lot
of wonderful people, and was able to do quite a bit of traveling. All of the hard work and practice was
worth it.
Andrea: I never got to
play sports or be on any kind of team.
Something I would still like to do and will do someday is learn how to
play the piano.
Thank you for telling us a bit about your younger selves. Now I'm eager to have you share with us about poetry breaks.
I know
that you share a passion for poetry. Can each of you describe where
that passion came from?
Growing up, we both enjoyed songs and
rhymes, neither of us really developed a passion for poetry until we went to college. We met and became best friends in our
undergraduate college cohort. We
had an amazing professor of literacy named, Dr. Terrell Young. He exposed us to many possibilities for
integrating poetry into our classrooms and we really took what we learned from
him to heart! We give students as
many opportunities as we can to expose them to poetry and integrate it into the
learning across the curriculum. We
made a vow to make it fun for kids.
Last
year, during April/National Poetry Month, I signed up at Poets.org to receive a
poem in my in-box each day. I’ve loved this way of starting my day! It sounds
to me as if you two have done something similar in your classrooms, with
“poetry breaks.” Can you describe what a poetry break is?
Being moms ourselves, we remember how hectic and rushed our
mornings were and wanted to be able to ensure every student had a positive,
relaxing, literacy rich start to their day. So the first 15-20 minutes of the morning, students do their
morning routine, math entry task, and then enjoy reading poetry around the room
either alone or with a partner. This
allows stressed-out students to restart their day on a calmer note. Another good
time to do poetry breaks is after lunch.
I’ve tried three times a day but I found that it works best to do poetry
breaks twice a day.
In the beginning of the year, we model
what a poetry break looks like. We
introduce the book, read the poem fluently, and then tell why we picked it,
using one or more of the six-traits of writing (word choice, sentence fluency,
idea, organization and voice).
Using the 6-traits of writing supports the use of academic language in
the classroom.
We make a poetry
sign-up chart (see below) and kids put a post-it note with their name to reserve
their day to share their poem aloud.
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| Andrea's poetry break chart |
Usually within the first two days of school, we ask
for volunteers after they have observed the modeling. It doesn’t take long for the shyness to wear off and for
students to have the confidence they need to jump in and go for it. After a few weeks of allowing
students to sign up on their own, we have had to resort to assigning students a
weekly poetry break spot because poetry breaks become so popular. It took us several years to figure out
that if we just assign a day and not use a post-it note system, it can help prevent us becoming the “poetry police.”
We try to schedule our struggling readers on Friday so we can practice
reading their poems with them or make sure they have the practice/support that
they need.
Poetry breaks can be done alone or
together. It’s funny because
even when students are absent on their day they will ask if they can please
perform their poetry break. And of
course, elementary students always enjoy finding the silliest poems that
describe things like picking your nose, using the bathroom, kissing, and
anything else that will cause their classroom family to giggle about. Our rule for deciding if a poem is too
silly for school or not is: If the
principal or your parents were to walk in the room would you STILL feel
comfortable reading your poetry choice aloud?
It is something we both loved learning
about from Dr. Young so we gave it a try our first year of teaching when we
taught in a job sharing situation.
We each taught half time in a third grade classroom. Poetry breaks quickly became the
favorite time of the day and our students' fluency rates sky-rocketed by spring. Each time a student signs up for a
poetry break, they read and practice many different poems before they choose
the one they want to perform. It
makes practicing fluency lots of fun and also increases comprehension. We also learned quickly how poetry breaks
contribute to building a kind, caring, and supportive classroom community as
students work together practicing poems, creating a literacy rich environment,
providing a literacy opportunity for students who finish work early, and allowing
students to be exposed to many authors and hear hundreds of poems over the
course of the year.
What
has surprised you most about including poetry in this way?
The feedback we get every single year
from parents is always a nice surprise. They are constantly telling us that
they grew up disliking poetry or never being exposed to it. The parents are thrilled that their
kids are asking for poetry books for Christmas and performing poetry breaks in
the evenings at home! Many parents
tell us they have learned to love poetry because of their children.
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