Writing Prompts to Sooth Kids' Toxic Stress

Tell it like it feels.

We've heard of talk-therapy. In a class, writing can serve as an emotional release for students. Having a voice, using it in a confidential framework--a personal release of events and circumstances that a kid may really need. That is a gift from a teacher.

Research indicates children need practice expressing their feelings, identifying what is an appropriate response, and who is their support system. Writing assignments can really help.

 http://www.sharpbrains.com/blog/2008/08/22/should-social-emotional-learning-be-part-of-academic-curriculum/

Writing is a powerful outlet.

As a middle school teacher, I would ask the students to follow the pattern of a five paragraph essay (with appropriate preparation and explanation.) Each of these prompts includes a 'three' for the internal paragraphs. Yes, I'm practical enough to want to prepare them for the California State Writing Examination for Grade 7 in March.

Writing, however, can function as an outlet for a student's deep feelings.

 Here is my Number One All Time Favorite Writing Prompt; it works especially well at the beginning of school. The students are given a promise of confidentiality.

"Three Things I Want You To Know About Me."

Students can describe sports' preferences, music, family life. With seventh graders, I found they would frequently write about very serious things, too, that their dad was in prison, or how their mom had been diagnosed with cancer but is okay now. Kids can be eloquent, if someone just asks them something important. As a teacher I got to know the students very quickly, and I don't just mean that they couldn't spell or punctuate. It felt good for them to write about something important, something they chose to tell Teacher about.

Kids can be eloquent if allowed.

Although it is not just kids suffering in poverty that need a release through writing, here is more research on the importance of giving students access to expressing their personal thoughts as a release to toxic stress, and the tools to deal with emotions.

 http://blog.coreknowledge.org/2012/01/04/student-achievement-poverty-and-toxic-stress/

 http://educationnext.org/what-do-education-policymakers-do-about-toxic-stress/

Angels' fan in the midst of Dodgers' fans.

Let's not be always so serious all the time. Life for kids now is pretty stressful in general. So here is a topic that can generate fun, friendship and comradery. If you wish, the students can create powerpoints. One year I did a powerpoint of my own, the students thought it was pretty funny.
  




"Three Of The Coolest Things I've Ever Seen."

The Chivas forever.

Its amazing. Some of my students have seen the pyramids in Mexico City. They can describe, in detail to make Howard Cosell jealous, a header in a soccer game that scored the winning goal. A homerun completely unexpected. A teacher can also learn a lot about music from essays like this. The students want to share these essays, so I set up groups for them to discuss; we have a good time, showing respect for other's opinions is our number one goal. (Always Dodgers and Angels fans describing a homerun or great catch. Lots of debates between these two groups as to who is best.)

Here's a link with so many other ideas for fun in class.

http://www.info.com/classroom%20fun?cb=27&cmp=4315&gclid=CN3gq6-nva8CFSkaQgodrworvw

 Middle school kids have a very basic sense of humor, so teachers had better be ready for this one. Actually, age doesn't really mature a sense of humor in most people. So I just tell the kids to keep it 'G' rated, and try to minimize the bathroom humor with this topic.

"The Three Times I Laughed The Hardest"

I laughed so hard...

There's  lots of falling, farting, and SNL skits with these essays, but sometimes a kid's just got to be silly, and laugh awhile. Everybody does. That will sooth toxic stress for a bit.





Here's a link for help with explaining the technicalities of writing.
http://teaching.berkeley.edu/bgd/writebetter.html

 The anecdotes the kids can come up with.

Can't Touch That

Joe

Oh, the Three Coolest Things I've seen?


Close runner up--Janet Jackson's "Rhythm Nation."               

So cool.

Reading the Signs of Love

Natalie's sign for love

Thank you, Paul McCartney, for the lovely song and even lovelier music video.

  "My Valentine" video. And these are the correct signs for love.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5oUQUR8uTk&NR=1&feature=endscreen

Apparently there were some errors with the signing.

 http://xfinity.comcast.net/articles/entertainment-eonline/20120419/b310171/

And actually it appears the video has been removed! I'm sorry--maybe it's on McCartney's site. Its so cool--reminds me of when I had an activity with singing and signing in my Special Ed. class.

Johnny's sign for love.

My Valentine - Featuring Natalie Portman and Johnny Depp
www.paulmccartney.com
Directed by Paul McCartney
Featuring: Natalie Portman and Johnny Depp
Guitar: Eric Clapton (because George Harrison was unavailable)

What if it rained?
We didn't care
She said that someday soon the sun was gonna shine.
And she was right, this love of mine, My Valentine
As days and nights,
would pass me by

Paul at the Grammys singing to Nancy.

I tell myself that I was waiting for a sign
Then she appeared,
a love so fine, My Valentine
And I will love her for life
And I will never let a day go by
without remembering the reasons why
she makes me certain that I can fly
And so I do,
without a care
I know that someday soon the sun is gonna shine
And she'll be there This love of mine My Valentine
(instrumental)
What if it rained?
We didn't care.
She said that someday soon the sun was gonna shine
and she was right This love of mine, My Valentine

Tweets of the Week

Lots of activity in the world of education.

It is the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens' birth! Let's check out his life, which was very Dickensian.

http://www.online-literature.com/dickens/

PBS has two productions of his currently available online to view, one enormously famous book, one almost unknown story. If you can't tell the difference between the two titles, read my previous blog.

This looks good and creepy. Its a mystery.

http://video.pbs.org/video/2216784370/

You can already buy this one.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

Its rather gothic.



 Here is the other PBS Masterpiece presentation by Dickens:

Great Expectations.  Don't forget you can also read the stories.

Here is a lovely, long link about librarians and literacy. And such alliteration! You can get to know your librarian while you're checking out Great Expectations.

 http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/slj/home/893928-312/all_aboard_implementing_common_core.html.csp?utm_source=ReadingRockets.org&utm_medium=Twitter#.T4yNCq4cm94.facebook

Developing the 'green corners' of the playground.

Living, teaching, and growing in the real world of nature. Kids needs to be outside! Using nature as a lesson plan.

http://www.edutopia.org/sustainable-schoolyard-design?fb_ref=.T4rzNMnV1JQ.like&fb_source=timeline

It is obvious that not all teachers have the resources (natural or otherwise) to have an outdoor playground. But we can interact with nature on some level.

 Here is a quote from the University of Michigan (and it has nothing to do with football, well, not exactly.)

http://www.davidwilliamsassociates.com/news/university-michigan-study-playgrounds-schools

"According to approximately 26 percent of the parents recently surveyed by the University of Michigan's C.S. Mott Children's Hospital, there is not enough playground space at schools for kids. Polling parents across the country, the study shows that more playgrounds in schools would make parents happy as well as help fight against childhood obesity.  One in every sixth child is affected by childhood obesity and taking a child to a outside to a park or recreation area to for them to spend time on a playground, that helps fight against childhood obesity."

Here is a link from Edutopia concerning the outdoor exposure kids are missing. Excellent CG on a video game is not enough.

http://www.edutopia.org/outdoor-education-nature-deficit-disorder?fb_ref=.T4rzX_UpQlQ.like&fb_source=timeline

"It's not just that the outdoors is uncool" to kids who prize gaming devices over games of catch, says Martin LeBlanc, national youth director of the Sierra Club. "It's that it doesn't exist for them."

That looks so inviting.

That is a very profound thought. Kids who never experience any natural setting. That's practically abuse.

In many areas when kids want to go outside, there is the question of air pollution and also street violence. Let's do something about these, too.

Here's a nice instructible about urban gardens for kids.

Sprouts for the sprouts.

http://forloveofchildren.wordpress.com/2011/01/25/urban-gardening-maximizing-use-of-small-spaces/

One more link. We learn through all modalities. The fine arts are important whether you play like Mozart or will be a da Vinci. If nothing else, its fun and a good emotional release.

Love those curls.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cafe-mcmullen/arts-education_b_1400142.html?ir=Arts&ncid=edlinkusaolp00000008&ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false

Such a happy guy.

 Mona Lisa and those young gentlemen in all those portraits, you can just eat your hearts out!

Mini-Series Review: Charles Dickens' Great Expectations

Gillian Anderson, as Miss Havisham, the best crazy eyes ever.

This is Charles Dickens' at his creepy best; Great Expectations is even more disturbing than "A Christmas Carol," because this isn't a supernatural story, just people being enormously terrifying and bizarre in the real world. The BBC really outdid itself in setting the tone and mood of this serving of Dickens.

This link should be good for awhile so you can see this magnificent story online.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/greatexpectations/

Ray Winstone, as Abel Magwitch

For those who were not involved in reading Dickens in school, let me say that although these stories translate well to film, Dickens really is worth reading for his personable style; his characters are alive. The setting is so compelling, you practically choke on the smoke, fog, and yuck in the London air. You can just about smell Abel Magwitch's B.O.

Dickens can really scare you, and make you worry for his innocent-victim-of-circumstance  characters. I still worry about David Copperfield (David Copperfield). Somehow that story didn't seem finished. And it was so sad about Nancy (Oliver Twist.). Dickens' own personal story is very Dickensian, so he wrote with a heart of experience as to the abandonment, terror, and anticipation of youth.

http://www.dickens-literature.com/l_biography.html

Oscar Kennedy as Pip the younger.

Douglas Booth as Pip the Elder.

Dickens, as always, is concerned about the economic class struggle of Victorian England and compares and contrasts the souls of the characters to evaluate who is noble and who is despicable. In this story, a little boy named Philip Pirrup (Pip) is lead through a series of manipulations that test the value of all his relationships and motives. He must grow into a gentleman.
Pip turned out to be a pip.

Pip's acquaintance with Miss Havisham is astonishingly awful, almost a horror flick. Gillian Anderson perfects the role. I never once expected her to say, "Mulder, is that you?" which is not a simple task when you are well known for another role. (X Files.) But she was also excellent in Bleak House by our author Dickens.

Please don't be satisfied with only the film or mini-series versions of Dickens. The books are great to teach a class, or read aloud. Dickens himself would travel giving lectures, reading his stories and doing all the voices of his characters. He came to America, too. And there are many documentaries on Dickens, at least five on Netflix.

You can also download some stories from this site, to read or listen to.

http://www.online-literature.com/dickens/

Helena Bonham Carter as Miss Havisham

A movie version of this story is in production due the end of the year, as this is the two hundredth anniversary of Dickens' birth.  When it comes out, we can compare and contrast Gillian Anderson and Helena Bonham Carter, the two Miss Havishams. (Though the pic at the right looks a bit like Tim Burton should have produced it.)

This youtube link from PBS Masterpiece almost gives away everything, but maybe it will tempt you enough to read or watch this classic. It is just a really good story.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_J4DFlyvd8

Teaching Is...

Poetry: Soothing Toxic Stress for Math Phobics

Mmmm, fractions taste good.

After collaborating in three middle school math classes this year, I personally, have a new fondness for fractions (which are helpful in a million ways!) But here is another different and lovely way to view math:

 

Numbers

by Mary Cornish
I like the generosity of numbers.
The way, for example,
they are willing to count
anything or anyone:
two pickles, one door to the room,
eight dancers dressed as swans.

I like the domesticity of addition—
add two cups of milk and stir—
the sense of plenty: six plums
on the ground, three more
falling from the tree.
And multiplication's school
of fish times fish,
whose silver bodies breed
beneath the shadow
of a boat.

Even subtraction is never loss,
just addition somewhere else:
five sparrows take away two,
the two in someone else's
garden now.
There's an amplitude to long division,
as it opens Chinese take-out
box by paper box,
inside every folded cookie
a new fortune.

And I never fail to be surprised
by the gift of an odd remainder,
footloose at the end:
forty-seven divided by eleven equals four,
with three remaining.
Three boys beyond their mothers' call,
two Italians off to the sea,
one sock that isn't anywhere you look.

from Poetry magazine
Volume CLXXVI, Number 3, June 2000


I also love zero--so versatile. Not willing to be a big nothing, it will also generously hold any place safe to google and beyond. Let's not even get started on the fantasy of the number line and integers--
 what imagination!

And here is even a zero lesson for little people!
http://themoveablealphabet.blogspot.com/2009/09/exercises-in-zero-nothing-and.html

Tweets of the Week: Headstart Evaluations

No cartoon could be as cute as the kids really are.

The Headstart program began through federal funding during the Johnson administration in 1965 (The War on Poverty), to assist low income kids that are under five years old.

The Obama administration (as with others in the past) are seeking to reduce the program's expense by proposing criteria that would close the doors of some of the local programs.

 http://www.npr.org/2012/04/03/149687163/under-scrutiny-some-head-start-programs-in-limbo

I know its unfair of me to put up such adorable pics of the kids....

President Obama has been working on evaluation of 'deficient' sites that may end in closing some sites.

http://swampland.time.com/2011/11/09/why-obamas-plan-to-fix-head-start-is-not-enough/

...when the President's plan may close some Headstart sites.

 Usually politicians don't get so up close and personal with citizens (especially little ones) from whom his administration may take away services. 

Read more: http://swampland.time.com/2011/11/09/why-obamas-plan-to-fix-head-start-is-not-enough/#ixzz1rUGl5t98

 What Is Head Start?

Head Start programs offer comprehensive services to low-income children 3 to 5 years old and their families. Specific services vary by site, but they include health care, nutrition, social services and more. More than 30 million children have participated in Head Start programs since 1965.
Health care services: Well-child care including immunizations, vision and hearing screening, dental care, screening for health or developmental problems, and health education for parents.

Breakfast is served.

Child nutrition: Meals and snacks that provide between one-half and two-thirds of a child's daily nutritional needs, depending on the length of the child's program day.
Social services for parents and families: Referrals to community services, including emergency assistance, counseling, literacy education, continuing education and employment training.

Parent at Headstart participating in RIF (Reading Is Fun.)

Early Head Start serves low-income pregnant women and children under 3 years old. Services include prenatal and postpartum care and education, home visits, parent-child activities and health and mental health services.

There has always been lots and lots of discussion about K-12 education, especially since NCLB. Now the focus is going younger.

 David Muhlhausen, a research fellow with the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation, says "it's time for new thinking" when it comes to early childhood education.

Similar to the 'Race to the Top' federal money scheme, a series of grants for early childhood education would create competition for federal money, with some serious strings attached by the government concerning ways to measure the success of the programs.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/05/25/govt-offers-500m-state-grants-preschool/

Will the early childhood programs go through the same torture as the K-12 system is?

When money and the economy is involved, its hard to predict what will happen.

The benefits of early childhood intervention are inestimable. Social skills being a positive result.

http://www.npr.org/2011/02/14/133629477/for-kids-self-control-factors-into-future-success

Opportunities for creativity in early childhood creates later success.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=76838288&ps=rs

Yes, sweeties, you make America happen.

In 1969, a Senate hearing about withdrawing fund from PBS invited Mr. Rogers in for a discussion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXEuEUQIP3Q

We still have PBS--so, you see--the government can do things right!

And, Mr. Rogers, we miss you. Thank you. I believe you liked me just the way I am.