#RIWP14

RIWP Annual Spring Conference 2014

I really enjoyed Thomas Newkirk’s keynote address. One of the first things he said was “Introduce self and students through telling stories”! This immediately made me draw connections to our Practicum Social Identity assignment. I loved his outlook on the act of storytelling and the narrative. I have not read any of his books, and have added The Art of Slow Reading and The Performance of Self in Student Writing to my summer reading list. Newkirk’s statement on CCSS was amazing and true: “CCSS says we need to promote critical thinking unless it’s about CCSS. If higher level thinking is important than we should do higher level thinking about the common core”! I cannot wait to read his books and figure out his awesomeness on a complete level!! 

The first workshop I attended was the Poetry Speed Dating. I honestly had so much fun! We were introduced to five different poetry prompts and given 8 minutes to complete each one. In a little over an hour I was able to produce five poems that I am pretty proud of. They have all been rewritten in my writer’s notebook to be cherished forever. These activities were so simple and fun, yet produced awesome poetry assignments for students. By having these fun little prompts and a different angle to introduce the topic/assignments I feel it would remove that fear of producing and performing for students. It would show students how they are able to produce a poem about anything. I think it is important to approach certain hot topic units with great care as to not deter students from the introduction of the unit. I know for myself, as a high school student, when I heard poetry I began to shut down and ignore. I obviously later became in tune with it, but that was through my own process of exploration. Maybe had I been introduced through a fun activity, or had a teacher like Mr. L, I would have been more apt to pick it up sooner. I loved this workshop and I can say that I will definitely use these activities with my future students.  

The second workshop I attended was the Micro Memoir session. My first reaction upon learning our assignment was AMAZING, FUN, and COMICS! It was a truly fun activity and I can see how it would get students excited to write a mini memoir. The activity was four random objects placed under numbered boxes in the front of the room. Each participant was given a number and as a whole we were instructed to stare at the revealed object, in complete silence, for three minutes and begin making connections. As an example, my random object was a strand of gold beads, and this was my thought process: gold beads, gold doubloons, Jake and the Neverland Pirates, Dakota singing and dancing, Dakota says “nine” for “again” at the end of her dance/song numbers, as a child I said “yobster” for “lobster”, and Sunday dinners with my dad at Bassett’s Inn. My 250 word micro memoir was about my Sunday dinners with my father. It was amazing and weird to see me pull that memory for my micro memoir from a string of gold Mardi Gras beads. My other huge take away from this session was seeing the instructor model her thought process and what she expected of us as students. I thought this was such a cool activity and I went home and drew my micro memoir as a six panel comic—I drew connections to my seminar on Graphic Memoirs immediately. I cannot wait to do this activity with my future students!!