Robert Frost Middle School Family Literacy Night 9/24/13 Even though this was the first one of the year and the whole 5th grade was new to it, over 250 people showed up. As I was walking in the door, I heard a couple of parents and their kids talk excitedly about writing together. When I walked into the cafeteria where it was to be held, 5 students came up to me to say how happy they were to be there…they attended last year’s FLNs. The school has developed a culture of writing, so the whole event was intense from beginning to end. I started off stealing Mary Guerrerro’s idea of a “Hope Tree”. I asked everyone to write their hopes for this year for themselves, their families, their friends, their school, the world, etc in any language. Write as many lines as you can beginning with “I hope….”. After 15 minutes of writing time where people young and old were furiously scribbling their hopes, we stopped for the next prompt. I think most observers would have been shocked at the amount of writing many of the children did in that short time…some with 2 pages of hopes. The next prompt was to write as many lines as you can beginning with “Thank you…” I suggested they thank people, families, God etc, but also think about thanking objects, things in nature, silly things (got a laugh saying, “Thank you, Sponge Bob, for living underwater and being so funny.”), food, etc. Again, the amount of writing they were doing was incredible. I knew that for the Open Mic I would have to ask them to read only 3-4 lines and not their whole compositions. Not surprisingly, the Open Mic was incredible. As usual, one pre-school (dictated to her parents) two kindergarteners and a first grader kicked off the sharing. Parents, middle school kids, a grandparent all read. One notable thing is several parents and kids thanked the city of Lawrence for all that it gave to them. One mother read a long praise piece about the city. I mentioned how writers, professors, and teachers from other US and international cities are always commenting about how Lawrence youth write like no other youth they know and how we believed there is something very special about how the city and its community nurtures young people. While people were writing and sharing, Frost teachers and staff quickly created a huge tree on the wall of the cafeteria and cut out 300 leaves. At the end, Language Arts teacher, Matt Debrocki, announced that anyone who wanted to could write one of their hopes on a leaf and stick it on the branches of the tree. You can imagine how cool the tree looked (I’ll get a photo), with all its “ hope leaves”. It will be up in the cafeteria all year. (Again, Mary originated the idea.) Amazing evening. 90 minutes long, including a raffle where 4 kids won pizzas. Can’t wait for the next one!
Posted on: Fri, 27 Sep 2013 22:18:38 +0000
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