Finding Patterns in Poetry

"A pumpkin got bitten by a werewolf at night, and a cat with a rat found meat to bite." 

Perhaps not award-winning poetry, but not bad for a first-grader still exploring word and rhythm patterns.

That's what we've been doing in first grade this year -- patterns. They have found repeating patterns, sorting patterns, increasing and decreasing patterns, and patterns all over the school when we went on a scavenger hunt.  They have kept records of all their patterns in a digital journal, using the "BookCreator" app.

Last week, I read the fabulous poem, The Witch by Jack Prelutsky, to them. We identified all the rhyming word pairs, then found the patterns in the writing -- that the end word of every second and fourth line, for example, rhymes.

Then we used a tree map to come up with our own Halloween word rhymes -- even pulling in a rhyming dictionary to find rhymes for "pumpkin." This was definitely a challenging project -- but a lot of fun, too.

Down the (Glowing) Rabbit Hole

Did you know that scientists have learned how to splice jellyfish DNA into furry creatures' DNA to make glow-in-the-dark critters? I had no idea, until my fourth graders started researching DNA this fall. And oh, what a fascinating, complex study it has become.

I envisioned this project oh-so-simply. The yearly theme for my fourth-grade GT class is "structure." Of course, we will do the toothpick bridges and famous buildings, but how interesting to add a biological component to this theme. And what is more integral to living creatures' structure than DNA?

I figured we'd do a little research, present what we learned with a PowerPoint, Keynote, maybe a sculpture or two...and move on.

Not so much.

This is the joy and difficulty of teaching a GT class. As we delved into this fascinating topic, my students' paths shot out like the tentacles of that glowing jellyfish. Suddenly, we're looking at DNA, RNA, cloning, mutations, GMOs, genetic engineering...and on and on and on. By our second day of research, I realized a quickie presentation was not going to cut it.

"How would you guys feel about making this our semester project -- and creating a DNA museum?" I asked them. Cheers! Excitement! And so it begins...

We used a Circle Map to define a quality museum exhibit.

"Digging" Science

Yes, ok, the title is a little punny -- but if you've ever met my dad, you know I couldn't resist a good (or bad) pun. My second-graders are in the middle helping to build a school garden. We've been doing research on plants, but I knew if I didn't get their hands dirty soon, there would be issues.

The big garden is not quite ready yet, but I figured a window herb garden would be just the ticket -- and if I could mix in some scientific methodology, even better.

I started with plastic cups, dirt (just a bag from the local box store -- nothing fancy), some seeds and some water. I also put together these gardening journal pages so they could document the process -- just like scientists do.

They had to measure, in grams, the amount of soil they added to their cups. They had to measure the depth they planted their seeds (in centimeters), and they had to measure, in milliliters, how much water they gave their plants. They loved it!

Plus, they will come every day to document their plants' progress -- because this is what scientists do. They measure. They observe. They document.

When their plants start to (hopefully) grow, we will work together to draw conclusions about what worked, what didn't, and what we may do the next time.

Their Directions

Soil Measuring Station

Seed-planting Station 

Watering Station 

Stealing Ideas

I played a really mean trick on my students recently -- but for a good reason.

As they walked in the door, I told them, very excitedly, that we were going to have a drawing contest. Being the competitive GT kids that they are, they were all super excited, and immediately got to work drawing the best space-scape, plant or structural drawing they could. They were really into it -- hunched over, shielding their amazing, winning drawings from prying eyes.

They had five minutes -- timed. Then I had them trade their drawings with another person, put their names on that person's drawing, and hand them in. This is where it got a little mean.

"Oh, John!" I exclaimed, looking at Stephanie's drawing. "What color! What imagination!"

"Oh, Gina! What beautifully rendered leaves!" while looking at Maria's drawing.

This garnered predictable results.

"That's not hers -- that's mine!" "I don't like this!" "But, that's mine!"

"But...it has their name on it," I'd reply every time, then picked a "winner." Inevitably the winners felt guilty for being recognized over a picture they hadn't really drawn, and the real "winner" felt extremely irritated.

I debriefed with every group afterwards -- a necessity, because confusion and hurt feelings happened in every class. I apologized, but explained that this was the point -- that your brain is much more likely to remember something it learns when there is a strong emotion attached, and this was a lesson I never wanted them to forget.

Plagiarism -- the bane of every teacher who teaches resarch, from first grade through post-graduate studies. Now my students from ages 7 through 10 have an extremely clear understanding of the issue. We followed up this activity (which I learned from a training this summer in the IIM research method), with a Brainpop video and circle map about plagiarism.


We began with the end in mind. I want them to be good researchers for life -- which means confronting the issue of plagiarism now, before bad habits form. A little mean? Yes. Are they better researchers for it? Absolutely.

Begin with the End in Mind

Those of you who know Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People know that my title today comes from his second habit. I work on a "Leader in Me" campus, where we take his habits and try to instill them in kids. I know, I know, it sounds like another of those "follow me and I'll show you the way, for only 90 bajillion dollars"types of character programs -- except that it's working. Really well. And the best part is that it's not only character education for kids -- it's working on the grownups, too. In fact, this blog exists because of my personal Wildly Important Goal. (Yes, I speak fluent Edubabble -- stay tuned for more!)

This summer, I also attended a four-day seminar by David Langford, who has researched and shared dozens upon dozens of tools intended to help kids problem-solve and become more intrinsically motivated. Although I had some serious issues with some of his ideas, I really liked his thoughts on having kids determine what an end product will be.  Also, he is a huge fan of sticky notes, and I like sticky notes, too. (Especially when I can color-code them. Hush. It's a teacher thing.)


With the start of my GT pullout classes last week, I wanted to "Begin with the End in Mind" and set the tone for the year. So I took that "quality" idea, reached into my bag of tricks and mixed this together:

For those of you "in the know," you may recognize the Thinking Map in the photo above. I'll spare you the testimonial, but I really like these tools, too. I talked to my students (grades first through fifth) about what quality means, then they brainstormed on their sticky notes how they know they've completed quality projects. They then had to group their sticky notes close to others with similar messages. (My favorite up there came from a first grader: "I wark my but oof.")

I put together the bulletin board with titles after everybody had the opportunity to define quality. Now, it's a visual reminder in my room that we all know quality when we see it -- and, we know how to create it.