Dear WinkWorld Readers,

As you know, I have written other blog posts about prairie pedagogy–and, particularly about a little one/two room school, Atall School on the isolated northern prairies of South Dakota.

COVID is hard for all of us.  Like families everywhere, the Atall families this spring have been homeschooling. Missy Urbaniak, the teacher, has been ZOOMing with the kids/families to keep the learning alive.  It has been challenging on many levels for all. Recently,  I was feeling discouraged, and a message came from Missy, telling me that, even in this chaotic spring schedule, the students had completed their final student newsletter, Prairie School Post (PSP) of the academic year.  The students’ writing inspired me and brought a little tear of joy.  The writing of these students fills me with hope. When you click on the link below, the student newspaper will open.

Prairie School Post 17 SPRING 2020

Posted below is a previous blog post (1/17/2020),  where more Prairie School Posts are mentioned.

Jack Frost or Robert Frost?

Below here are some recent photos of the Aall students.

Here the students are celebrating 100 days of school (Feb.27, 2020), and they dressed as if they were 100 years old.  

And, in the photo below, the students did get to go skiing before school closed for COVID.

Just had to post the most recent PSP–now back to the queue: SUNY, Oswego and “spin doctors.”

Dear WinkWorld readers,

As  you know, WinkWorld tends to be whatever has my attention at the moment, and I have been thinking a lot about human connections.

Human Connections

I so remember the first time I read Jim Cummins’s sentence: Human relations are at the heart of schooling (Cummins, 1996, p. 1) in his Negotiating Identities: Education for Empowerment in a Diverse Society, published by California Association of Bilingual Education.  That sentence stopped me in my tracks, as it was so true based on my own experience.  Today, it is more true than ever, and I was reminded of this last week when I was invited to share with teacher education students in a class at  State University New York (SUNY), Oswego.  Hopefully, I will have a WinkWorld ready on that experience within a couple of weeks.

In addition, I am thinking of some sharing I can do based on the work of Denny Taylor, et al and Beginning to Read and the Spin Doctors of Science.  If you still have your own copy of that body of work, please reach out to me at joan@joanwink.com

While I am thinking on these two fairly large topics, life continues out here on the prairies of South Dakota, and I have a couple of unrelated events to share.

First, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (SDSMT) Virtual Graduation

One of the joys of being on the South Dakota Board of Regents (BOR) is that each year we are assigned to one of our six universities to represent the BOR at their graduation.  This semester, of course, each university had a virtual graduation, and I was happy to take part at SDSMT.  In the following video, my sharing begins about 7 minutes plus and lasts until about 10 minutes.  I have never seen an avatar of me, but I loved her.  One of our grandkids said that I made it to a retro 8 bit coin-op game.  Finally, a little street cred with the grands: Thank you, President Rankin and MINES.

Hope you enjoy this video and the various avatars.

Second, More Making with Ms. Dobras

If like Ms. Dobras’s making videos, as much as I do, you will need to sign up at her YouTube videos, however  here are a three more, which Amy just created.  Amy is on a roll, and I wish the same for you.

May 1, Better World Day, 10:50 min.

May, 3, Radial Symmetry (origami) Design, 14:51 min.

May 10, Mothers’ Day Origami Flowers, Día de las Madres, 12:41 minutes

This is a story about roots–Ms. Dobras’s and mine. In the photo above, I am standing in the dry San Pedro riverbed, where this story flourished. 

Dear WinkWorld Readers,

This is the third blog on Making with Ms. Dobras, as seen on YouTube.  In PART ONE, I shared some examples of how Ms. Dobras does making with teachers K-12 and students. In PART TWO, I posted some resources on more general understandings of Making or Makerspaces.  Now, in PART THREE, I want to introduce you in more depth to Ms. Dobras, or Amy, as I know and love her. Sometimes my blog, WinkWorld,  is only professional, and sometimes it is very personal–like this issue.  The professionals posts, I guess, I do for you; the personal ones, I do for me.

Here is Ms. Dobras with her classroom rules.

Ms. Dobras assured me that she usually doesn’t post pictures of herself topless, but that in this case, it is okay.  Ms. Dobras, the maker teacher, is right below Micky Mouse, on her mom’s t-shirt.  At this point, I had known Ms. Dobras for a few months.

A typical day at Cascabel ranch in the San Pedro River Valley, north of Benson, AZ. Left to Right: Bo, Joan, Dean, Mary Ann Dobras, Amy and Wendy, Dawn Elizabeth, who soon became Winkie and Dawn Elizabeth, who soon became, Dobie.

How did I meet Ms. Dobras?

It started simply on a very hot Sunday in Tucson in 1973, when I took our kids (Dawn, 6 and Bo, 2 1/2) and went looking for a church.  Somehow, I got lost and missed the church I was looking for, but we happened to pass Rincon UCC on Craycroft, and I remember saying, “Hey kids, here is a church, and there are even cars and people, so let’s stop here.  We walked to the front door of that church, and a woman (Mary Ann Dobras)  with her three little kids came outside to greet us.  Amy (Ms. Dobras of making fame) and her twin, Wendy, age 2 1/2, took Bo and ran off to pre-K class.  Mary Ann’s daughter, Dawn Elizabeth, age 6, grabbed our Dawn Elizabeth, age 6, and ran off to the first grade class.  Mary Ann and I went into the cool church for the service, and thus began a family friendship which has lasted 47 years.  Amy, Wendy, and Bo soon morphed into the ‘Lil Birds and the two Dawn Elizabeths became the Big Birds.

One of my favorite photos of the ‘Lil Birds (Amy, aka Ms. Dobras, Bo, and Wendy) is posted below.

Below here is a collage of photos of the ‘Lil Birds  as they were growing up.

And, here is a collage of the Big Birds as they were growing up.

The ‘Lil Birds and Big Birds spent many happy moments on the Cascabel ranch.

As you can see below, somehow through these 47 years of friendship, the treasured Cascabel mailbox made it back to us. And, do you see those two white teddy bears in the picture to the right of Dean’s head?  Those teddy bears were made for me by Diane Wessel Kindt of Mobridge, SD, who was my BFF from K-12.  She created these teddy bears from a mink jacket, which belonged to Grandma Mary.  That photo tells a lot about my own roots. Diane and I are still dear friends 70 years later.  Deep roots.

These are the bluffs directly behind the house on the Cascabel ranch.

I realize this story of personal roots does not matter to some of the WinkWorld readers, but to a few of us, these roots are requeteimportante.  (We don’t really have an English word, which captures ‘requete’ and ‘importante.’)

Thank you, Dobras family, for permission to share pictures.

Sunny, you will meet her when you go to any of the Making with Ms. Dobras postings on YouTube.

Hi WinkWorld Readers,

This post is Part Two in a three-part series on Amy Dobras, as she shares her talents with “making” in the classroom.  In Part One, I shared a few specific examples of Making with Ms. Dobras on YouTube.  Since that posting, Ms. Dobras has posted  more videos on YouTube; all are listed at the bottom of this blog. 

In this issue of WinkWorld, I want to share what Making means  (generically) in a classroom.  Please bare with me on my definitions, because as you know, I am a languages & literacies person, and I am now dangerously close to science for the future.

Making or makerspace is just that: It is a space in schools where students make things with their hands, brains, and heart.  The thought of kindergarten kids using power tools catches my attention, but that is exactly what happens.  Ms. Dobras teaches making classes for elementary, middle, and high school teachers.  Her classes include art, design, prototype design, design thinking, taking creative risks, revising mistakes, and testing their own creations often.  For example, elementary students might learn to create mazes, and older students would extend this concept to designing mazes.  As elementary students move through the grades, makerspace classes tend to morph into STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) or STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math) classes.

Think: integrated learning and creating. All content areas are experienced simultaneously. It may seem simple at first, but soon the students are coding and programming, as they build, make, create.

Makers think with their hands.

What is Makerspace?

What is a Makerspace?

What is making at Ms. Dobras’s school?

What is making? The following blog comes from Lighthouse Community, where Amy teaches.   In this blog, the schools provide the what/why/how of making.

Making with Ms. Dobras on YouTube

#1 Making with Ms. Dobras: 3D Sculptures

#2 Making with Ms. Dobras: Tetrahedrons

#3 Making with Ms. Dobras: Marble Mazes

#4 Making with Ms. Dobras: Origami Ninja Star

Subscribe to Making with Ms. Dobras–it is available on any of her pages.

Dear WinkWorld Readers,

Meet my friend, Ms. Dobras, who has taught in San Francisco, and is now teaching Making to 250 K-4th grade students in Oakland.  I’m loving Ms. Dobras’s classroom rules.  To be honest, Ms. Dobras is that teacher we all want for our kids and grands.

I know so many teachers and families, who are teaching online or from home, and all are trying to engage students with learning new ideas. Ms. Dobras decided she would share on YouTube, as it forced her to learn new information, also. This is the first of a three-part series on Making with Ms. Dobras.  In this first post, we will share a few fun examples of how you can be a maker, too.  Second, I’ll post a bit of information on making or makerspaces.  And, finally, I’ll tell you more about Ms. Dobras.

Ms. Dobras is a Maker teacher (more to come on what this means), but for now, enjoy a few examples.

Title on YouTube:

Making with Ms. Dobras. Making Project #2: Making Tetrahedrons.

April 17, 2020, 9 minutes

A new guest: Sunny (a little ray of sunshine).  You will see her on the YouTube video.

(permission granted by Solkoll)

Ms. Dobras’s first grade students created this Sierpinski’s pyramid.  If you want to try this, there are many, many examples and templates available on the web.  Think Pinterest. 

All of this conversation with Ms. Dobras about tetrahedrons, Sierpinski’s pyramid, hexahedrons, octahedrons, dodecahedrons, and iconsahedrons made me mutter: Can fractals be far behind?  This caused Ms. Dobras to wax eloquently about her students and their understandings of fractals.

Dear WinkWorld Readers,

First, the photo at the top is just our little reminder to ourselves…

Now, on to the content of this WinkWorld: As some of you know, I love the various forms of literacy and the multiple meanings of literacies.  Remember when we thought that literacy was reading and writing–well, it is that, but it is also much, much more.  The concept of literacy is now understood to be wider and deeper than what I used to think many years ago. For example, do  you know about “junk literacy?”

 Junk Reading

“Henry loves to read junk,” his mom told me.  “What will I do? 

“What is the junk that he reads?” I asked.

“He is constantly reading advertisements for tractor parts, new trucks, and big tires. He even reads the instruction books for our ranch vehicles.  He is always finding the seed or chemical catalogs to read.  He even loves to read credit card applications.  He loves to read junk,” Mom explained to me.

Henry is 5-years-old

Here he is with his junk literacy.

Below here Henry is reading more of his favorite junk reading.

This reminds me of another little boy and his junk reading: Pokéon and Captain Underpants–and, from there he went right to Harry Potter.  Dawn shared this story with me in The Power of Story.

Here is Wyatt today, and I see no evidence that his junk reading hurt him.

Wyatt today.

Krashen and Ujiie (2005) ask us to re-think our old ideas about light reading, or junk reading.  We all read junk, but we call it light reading.  I have light reading all over the house, and it doesn’t seem to hurt me. Light reading leads to more complex reading.  I can only read one or two fast, easy novels, and then I need something more.

With tongue firmly planted in my cheek, I have also written about junk literacy.

Junk Literacy: What?

The Power of Story, (2018, pp. 30-32)

For more on the various types of literacy, see below.

Dear WinkWorld Readers,

As you know, my blog tends to capture (a) what is happening in my life and/or (b) ideas floating through my head.  Yesterday was a great example.  It was early evening Sunday after a very quiet day of self-isolation, when a woman walked down our gravel lane.  Turns out that she had walked 30 miles yesterday and needed a place to spend the night.  We scurried around and set her up in our Prairie Parlour (a.k.a., single-wide trailor).

Meet Ann Sieben:

Ann is a pilgrim connected with the Catholic church. As I now understand the concept of “pilgrim,” she is like a nun, only she walks. Daily.  And, I do mean, she walks.  So far, she has walked through 55 countries in 13 years. Previously, Ann was an engineer for 20 years; she took a sabbatical, and never returned to that career.  Instead, she took a vow of poverty and joined the Society of Servant Pilgrims. Click on the link below, where you can also register your email in order to receive stories from around the world.

societyofservantpilgrims.com

Camino de Santiago de Compostela

The church at Santiago de Compostela, Spain is a well-known shrine which pilgrims visit every year.   For centuries people from all over the world walk for days to visit the church.  They carry a minimum of personal possessions and pass the nights in simple inns or churches along their way.   However, I was not aware that pilgrimages also take place in the US, too.

Click here to see a peak of Santiago de Compostela, Thank you, Britannica.

Ann is sometimes known as the Winter Pilgrim, as she enjoys cold and snow. If you click on her blogspot, you will find information about some of her walks, and you can read her many stories.  Over you the right side of her blog, she tells about herself.

Winter Pilgrim

So, what did I learn from this surprise blessing in the middle of the prairies on a quiet Sunday during the pandemic?  People are good.  When Ann tells stories, she always ends with “people are good.”    Seems like a good thing to learn and re-learn during these difficult days of Covid-19.

When I last saw her, she was headed South on Plainview Road. 

Dear WinkWorld Readers, 

In what follows I will share a few resources, which you might want to use at home, while the schools are closed.  I will call your attention to stories, free e-books, free coloring books,  virtual field trips, and even a teacher, who you might find helpful.

Stories

If you simply type into Google, Storytime, you will find many, many locations for stories for all ages. Also, the website for your local library will certainly have stories and other resources for you.

School Library Journal (storytime pages) – just one of my favorites.

Donalyn Miller and Teri Lesesne often have many great resources on Facebook.

Many teachers are reading aloud for their individual classes now.  Patricia Polacco granted permission for teachers to read her stories (see her on Facebook).  I tend to search YouTube for an author reading her own story, as I did in the last WinkWorld with Mem Fox reading Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOgc7nLSreU

Here is Mem reading Good Night, Sleep Tight.

In the photo below, you can see that little Cora found her storytime without a computer.

The stories of Mem Fox often remind me of the stories of Alma Flor Ada (just Google her).  In this video below, Alma Flor talks about how she learned to read, when her grandmother wrote words in the dirt with a stick as they walk about their farm.   Hopefully, some of you, adults, will enjoy hearing Alma Flor’s  literacy story. 

Two more digital stories from Missy Urbaniak and me, which we created to share with the Atall students.

First, Missy and Crow Boy, a story which I just love. 

And, second, another story I love, If You Are Not From The Prairies.

Free e-Books

Your local library.

Scribid is free right now.

Redshelf has many free titles right now.

Free Coloring Books from Museums

Many museums have opened their collections and have created free coloring books which you can download.  More seem to becoming available daily.  This one below, I believe, is specific for Google docs.

Virtual Trips

Want to visit a farm?

Want to visit the San Diego Zoo and other amazing places?

A Teacher Offering His Services in Secondary Science and Math!

The last time I was with Darren Hayes, he was a teeny-bopper in one of my classes in Benson, AZ.  Since that time, he has gone on to have a wonderful career in TX as a secondary teacher. I noticed on Facebook that Darren offered to help families with secondary students working on science and math. Darren has had 22 years of teaching experience (Chemistry, Biology, Secondary Forensics, and Homebound Algebra 2 and Physics). Darren can be reached at: helpcovid20@gmail.com

Thank you, Darren!

“Homework”

Below you can see that Tinley, who lives on a neighboring ranch, is doing her “homework.”

Dear WinkWorld Readers,

Sometimes I am asked how I write this blog, WinkWorld.  The truth is that it just sort of evolves from something which interests me. I like to think that my blogs might stir some thoughts for families and/or teachers who are interested in literacy.  For example, WinkWorld this time will focus on Mem Fox, a writer from Australia.  I love her stories for children and her books for teachers.  I was thinking about Mem, so I drove to Atall School (50 m. away) to share Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge with the kids. For those who are new to my blog, Atall is a one/two room school on the isolated prairies of South Dakota.  One teacher–11 kids–all grades K through 8. 

On YouTube I found a video of Mem reading Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge.  I hope you enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOgc7nLSreU

After reading Wilfrid, the kids wanted to hear Possum Magic.  In this book, the possum can magically make herself invisible, and when I last saw the Atall kids, they were drawing various “invisible” animals.

Here is one example of how the illustrator, Julie Vivas, drew the invisible possum.

Below here I am posting a photo of 4 of Mem’s books which we used that day in class.

This experience made me realize that I no longer had all of my Mem books–I am sure that I have passed them on during the years. 

I then flew to Tucson for the Tucson Festival of Books, and the first thing I did was go to my all-time fav used-book store, Bookman’s, which I see is now called Bookman’s Entertainment Exchange.  I asked an employee if he could help me find any Mem Fox books for kids. He crawled around while searching the lower shelf and found a treasure trove of Mem Fox books, which you can see below.

He even found a copy of my fav Mem book.

Thank you, Mosby!  You were terrific.  Without you, I never would have found all of those Mem Fox books to take home to read to the Atall kids.

This is not the first time that Booksman’s has helped me.

In the 1970s, when I started teaching middle school kids in Benson, AZ, a book I found (Hooked on Books by Fader & McNeil, 1966) on the floor of the gardening section of the original Bookman’s on Broadway, saved me.  Before Benson hired me, they asked me if I could teach language arts, and I said yes, since I had majored in Spanish and English lit.  Turns out that I knew nothing about language arts.   However, Hooked on Books and those Benson kids saved me from myself.

So, in answer to my original question: How do I put WinkWorld together?  You can see that I just live and write about it.  This particular issue of WinkWorld took several decades, but when I saw Mosby crawling around on the floor of Bookman’s, I immediately knew I had a story, which you can read below.

Critical Pedagogy 4th Ed – The Benson Kids

Hello WinkWorld Readers, this post is for reading teachers, families, and all who care about literacy,

What in the world is GSSR?  Guided Self-Selected Reading is when “you read a whole lot, really a lot, of very interesting texts,” (2020, Krashen).

In the following 6 minute post, you can see Krashen as he explains the concept.  Please note his granddaughter’s pink bedroom walls, where he does the recording. She is his tech support.

Youtube: Guided Self-Selected Reading

Here is his very short article written in meaningful language with lots of good supporting evidence–isn’t this what we all want? (permission granted)

Teachers and families, your job is to know the children really well so that you can help guide them to best books for  each, but then get out of the way and let them choose for themselves, as Holden does in the photo below.

I primarily follow Dr. Beniko Mason at Story Listening & Reading for Language Acquisition on Facebook.  Thank you, Steve and Beniko, for all of your sharing.