Frog's First Interview

Today's quick write-courtesy of Jo Knowles-from Teachers Write

Hello there friends.  I am Fred the frog...I am green and slimy with 4 legs.  A funny thing about my legs, they've stretched and grown.  Soon after I hatched from my egg, I had a tail and no legs and I swam through the water like a fish.  Then my back legs grew out.  Before I knew it, I had front legs too and could hop onto the land nearby instead of only living in Carol Pond.  On top of all this growing excitement, I also lost my tail!  Who knew?

So now, my favorite place to hang out is in the small hole in the garden. I dug it out to keep cool during the hot summer days.  I slowly creep out on hot summer evenings to hunt for my dinner of bugs.  I don't like sharing my corner of the garden with anyone else, I love to keep all the bugs for me...

Here's some news about my family!  When I was first born, I had lots of brothers and sisters.  We all hung out as  small black eggs together in the water connected to the roots of the lily pads.  After we hatched, I got to spend lots of time swimming with the family in the water of the pond.  Sadly, some of my siblings (my brothers and sisters) were eaten by fish, like Koi or birds, like Blue Heron or Hawks.  I don't see my family much now that we've left the pond.  We all went our separate ways.

I'm going to tell you about my favorite part of me-my tongue!  I love how I can stretch it out and use it to catch my prey, like beetles, flies and ants.  I want to fill my belly with good things to eat.  The least favorite thing about me is my skin.  People stare at my skin and comment about its ugliness when they see me.  That makes me feel sad sometimes.

My biggest pet peeve is the myth that people always blurt when they see me and try to pick me up-I'm going to pee on their hand and give them warts.  This is completely untrue.  I think that mommies made this up so their kids wouldn't pick up frogs.  However, I do have warts on my skin that can pass along bad bacteria to people-so you might not want to touch me after all.

The thing that I am most afraid of are birds.  I don't like birds for two reasons.  One reason is they can be big enough to swoop down out of the sky and eat me.  The other reason I don't like them is because the smaller birds swoop into my garden and eat the bugs I was spying on for dinner.

So now that you know a little bit about me, how about telling a little bit about you?

Poetic Voice on the Blogs!

This past week, I experienced a very powerful blogging session with 5th Graders from one of my schools...as a matter of fact, the one that's being closed...

As a culminating activity to National Poetry Month, we used poetry as our form for writing...and we focused on voice! We used Michelle @ Literacy Learning Zone's poem Voices from the Lost and Found as a mentor text...we talked about how the author gave voice to the items in the lost and found, the feelings they have, etc. We connected it with how the students had previously written from the voice of one of the animals Mr. Leo brought to the building to show the kids...Anna and I both shared our poems we wrote, dog and cat...here are our examples:

It's a Dawg's World
By Anna Panning

 When I woke up this morning I needed to stretch.

That didn’t happen, I had to play “go fetch”.

The day got better when I started to eat,

Just food from a box? That’s not a treat.

I needed to get a brush because my coat was all nappy.

When I was done getting brushed I was very happy.

My mood was all snappy so I started to bark

I just saw my friend cat and she gives me a spark!


From me, the Cat
by Amy Rudd

I am the small and lazy cat
sometimes sassy and a brat!

I have a friend whose name is Dawg
sometimes we like to go for a jog!

I like to do things with my friend,
I hope that we stay friends to the end!

We decided to start our own little gang
Just she and I, we like to hang

Dawg, I’ll just curl up on your lap
I am sleepy now, I need…a  n—a—p—zzzzzzz!

We all wrote one together, "Tiki" (not with the morning class, but with the afternoon class...we shouldn't have skipped this step...modeling is such a critical part of the process...)
After this, we turned them loose on their blogs and asked them to compose their poems! I am so proud of ideas they thought of writing from the perspective of: a closing building, glue sticks, chairs, a desk, the roadway, sidewalk, basketball, football, heat, socks, Cheese, Surfboard, pop tart, lion's food, Cake, tv, and test (just to mention a few)...we still have some editing work to be done but I think we could definitely combine them into a book!

We really challenged them with this and they rose to the occasion! Way to go fifth graders! I am so proud of you! A big thanks to Anna for taking the leap with me and seeing this through and a big thanks to Michelle for the mentor text that inspired this work!