Western New York Writing Project

July 10, 2008
Summer Institute Log
Editor: Beth Latko

The day started with Matt and Keri having us sit at a new table with different people. Comments by the end of the day were that this gave us the opportunity to really meet the other people in our group! One of my new table partners, Joel, and I had a conversations about research papers J (I know…thrilling)

Breakfast was brought by Brooke, Karen, and Keri. Breakfast pizza, rice krispy treats and juice. We all ate well today!

R & R
Brenda read a picture book entitled The Three Questions. It is a story from Leo Tolstoy. A boy has three questions. Does he find the answers?

Writing Groups
Everyone says that their writing group is the best. That is a good sign that we are all getting along in large and small groups! In our group, Patti shared an Ode which she later shared in Open Mic. Our group said we should write an Oprah Wish List Letter and send it to her.

Lesson Demo 1
Katrina introduced Tom. He was an intern last year and now a fellow this year. He will be going into his senior year at Canisius.

Tom said that reluctant readers and writers can get into the writing process. Let students use their personal experience or prior knowledge in your courses.

His lesson is entitled Inspirational Framing! A Lesson in Getting Started. Tom had us starting with dirt to seeds to seedlings, all with tender loving care in between. We traveled between three stations to help us arrive at our plant status. The stations included a You Tube video entitled “Did You Know?”, a song by Thrice, and Chapter 20 from Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.

We then completed our Dear Tom note cards and then the reflection pool. Great Job Tom!!

Lunch
On our own. Many of us gather in the quad to enjoy the sun and discuss pertinent education topics and other items.

Lesson Demo 2
Brenda who is a Library Media Specialist had a lesson entitled We All Have a Story to Tell – Writing and Sharing Your Story.
Students often don’t know where to begin so Brenda had some great writing prompts that ignited our own writing.

To begin, Brenda showed us an online video/photo story of someone telling a major event in his life but through the use of ironing. The she showed us a podcast of a student’s story and then an example of someone’s personal story example. To help us organize our own stories we could “draw” the story or use a story diagram. We then too one of the writing prompts and began to compose our own story.

We then composed our Dear Brenda note cards and participated in the reflection pool.

Another great Lesson Demo!!

Open Mic
We hold the record……… Everyone took the step forward and shared something they wrote to the entire group. We heard many great poems, stories, etc. We look forward for perspectives fellows and returning fellows’ contributions next week.