New Treasures
by Doreen Anderson

I gleaned a great many “gems” through my participation in the 2003 Oregon Writing Project. These were freely shared by the OWP directors, guest speakers, and participants. They were embedded in the daily class activities and websites we explored and were sprinkled liberally throughout the recommended readings. My students will benefit greatly as these various gems are added to my teaching treasure chest. In addition to providing new gems, OWP also afforded me with the opportunity to “polish” those already in my possession.

The main gem I will add to my teaching treasures as a result of my participation in the Oregon Writing Project is sharing and creating much more poetry with my second grade students. In the past, I shared favorite poems with my students, but presented only a very brief unit on writing them. This unit focused primarily on rhyming poetry and specific forms such as Haiku and Limericks. Through OWP I learned that free verse is actually much easier for students who are just beginning to write poetry. I also learned that second grade students are not only very capable of writing free verse, but that they enjoy doing so.

To encourage my students to write more poetry, I will use the curriculum gems presented by Regie Routman in the book Kids’ Poems: Teaching Second Graders to Love Writing Poetry (Scholastic, 2000). Ms. Routman states that using kids’ poems as models is the most powerful vehicle for motivating students to write poetry. Her book presents many examples of students’ poetry in “rough draft” and final form, which I will use until I can collect samples of poetry from my own students. I will use mini-lessons to present ideas for writing and to point out elements of poetry, while remembering Ms. Routman’s admonitions to “look at each poem as a whole, not to be broken into skills or parts.” Other ideas Ms. Routman presents which I will be incorporating include “poet of the day,” setting up a year-round poetry corner with favorite poetry books, allowing students to choose their own topics, encouraging students to keep a poetry notebook, frequently sharing students’ efforts in a variety of ways, and creating a class anthology.

In addition to Ms. Routman’s suggestions, I will also implement the activities and chants contained in William and Carol Strong’s Strong Rhythms and Rhymes: Language and Literacy Development Through Sentence Combining (Thinking Publications, 1999). These gems (the chants and their suggested activities) have been shown to aid students in achieving “phonological awareness, syntactic fluency, and joyful expression.” In addition to using the chants, I plan to provide my students with many more opportunities for oral language use and cooperative problem-solving, as recommended by the Strongs.

A final area where I will polish and add gems is in Creative Writing. I will continue to use writing prompts that have produced good results over the years and that go along with our units of study, but other than these, students will be allowed to select their own topics. I will encourage more discussions between students as they create and place more importance on sharing their products with others. Possibilities for sharing student writings include class readings and discussions, bulletin board and website displays, inclusion of student writings in class and school newsletters, and creation of individual student books and class anthologies. Many of these suggestions can be found in On Their Way: Celebrating Second Graders as They Read and Write (Jane Fraser and Donna Skolnick, Heinemann, 1994).

Participating in the Oregon Writing Project provided me with new gems to add to my teaching treasure chest and helped me to “polish” many of the gems I already had. I am now more prepared to help my students as they create “written gems” and I look forward to reading their works and sharing them with others.