Primary Grade Students Writing in Response to Literature

A 2nd grader's response after reading a fable by Arnold Lobel.

Primry Grade Student Writing from Read Aloud Text from Mary Ann Reilly / Blueprints for Learning, Inc.

Dear Gaza

Push for Gaza Cease-Fire (M.A. Reilly, 2014)

from Yellow Umbrella

Dear Gaza

      - Hala Alyan

Dear Gaza,

I’m sorry

Dear Beirut,

I still love you like an arsonist

Dear Venice,

When that glassblower put his lips to

the glowing pipe

and I followed his breath into

an ornament

I understood grace

Dear New Orleans,

You gave me swelter and melody and

staircase after the longest winter of my life

You are where I forgave myself

Dear Boston,

I found the bird already dead

Crooked nest scattering

the pavement

and for days all I saw

was that constellation of bones

Dear Aya Nappa,

I cannot hear your name

without thinking war and ship

and two moons before coastline

Dear Tripoli,

It was whiplash

It was awful month

It was season of flinching

I won’t be coming back

Dear Rome,

When I think of my future self

She is walking your piazza

wearing something yellow

Dear Wichita,

I remember the summer songs on the radio

The car rides through the backbone

of your highways

I remember corn fields and pregnant sky

and always a thunderstorm

Dear Gaza,

I’m sorry

Dear Ramallah,

Thank you for the applause

Thank you for the seltzer water

the tableh player

the 3am tomato and bread

Thank you for the balcony

Dear Dubai,

I forgot a scarf

a silver ring

a tube of lipstick

and courage to make a mistake

I found the ring

The rest you may keep

Dear Aleppo,

Forgive me my litter

my uneaten rice

my abundance of light bulbs

Forgive me my bed soft and warm

even in January

Dear Baghdad,

Twenty six years and you still

make me cry

Dear Doha,

With you I am always dreaming of

starlit eels and honey water and swans

bathing in fluorescent sky

I miss those colors

Dear Istanbul,

Marry me

Dear Dallas,

I bought polished pebbles from

your mall kiosks

and pretended I was Aladdin

turning the soil over

and gasping

Dear Gaza,

I’m sorry

Dear Beirut,

You are cherry end of cigarette

You are pulse and tunnel

Freckles and siren

How can you fit so much?

Dear Norman, Oklahoma,

No one calls me Holly anymore

I blink slept woke wanting fairytale hair

for breakfast

loving boys with quarterback hands

and suburban smiles

Dear Las Vegas,

I’d rather not

Dear Brooklyn,

I came to you tumbled and spun

I came to you with 62 books

and the mistakes I’d gathered like splinters

You showed me where to sit

Dear Dublin,

Someday

Dear Damascus,

Nothing is as dangerous

as an unlit match

You taught us that

Dear Paris,

By beauty I meant that bridge

Those clouds and the legs my brother and I

dangled over the water

Dear Jerusalem,

Only you know what I am capable of

Dear London,

When I didn’t speak

it wasn’t because I was ungrateful

I was trying not to cry

Dear Gaza,

I’m sorry

Dear Manhattan,

I left a part of myself in that nightclub

like some paper crane with a beating heart

She is crumpled and sleeping

Do not wake her

Dear Bangkok,

I ate your fruit salted

Bare fingers peeling back skin

for shrines of gold and sugar

Dear Beirut,

I bruise as easily as you do

We are both anemic veins

and unbrushed hair and survivor’s

guilt

Dear Gaza,

When I come to you

it will be summer

Scorching sun and a music to the

shoreline

You’ll ask me

‘what took so long’

and I’ll tell you where I’ve been

-Hala Alyan is a Palestinian-American poet

Poetry Break: Horses at Midnight Without a Moon

Blind Faith, III (M.A. Reilly, 2008)

Horses at Midnight Without a Moon

 - Jack Gilbert

Our heart wanders lost in the dark woods.
Our dream wrestles in the castle of doubt.
But there’s music in us. Hope is pushed down
but the angel flies up again taking us with her.
The summer mornings begin inch by inch
while we sleep, and walk with us later
as long-legged beauty through
the dirty streets. It is no surprise 
that danger and suffering surround us.
What astonishes is the singing.
We know the horses are there in the dark
meadow because we can smell them,
can hear them breathing. 
Our spirit persists like a man struggling 
through the frozen valley
who suddenly smells flowers
and realizes the snow is melting
out of sight on top of the mountain,
knows that spring has begun.

From Collected Poems by Jack Gilbert. Copyright © 2012 by Jack Gilbert.

Poetry Break: 3 from Billy Collins

Keeping Watch (M.A. Reilly, Plymouth, UK, 2012)

The Lanyard 

                  – Billy Collins

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

The Future

      - Billy Collins

When I finally arrive there—

and it will take many days and nights—

I would like to believe others will be waiting

and might even want to know how it was.

So I will reminisce about a particular sky

or a woman in a white bathrobe

or the time I visited a narrow strait

where a famous naval battle had taken place.

Then I will spread out on a table

a large map of my world

and explain to the people of the future

in their pale garments what it was like—

how mountains rose between the valleys

and this was called geography,

how boats loaded with cargo plied the rivers

and this was known as commerce,

how the people from this pink area

crossed over into this light-green area

and set fires and killed whoever they found

and this was called history—

and they will listen, mild-eyed and silent,

as more of them arrive to join the circle

like ripples moving toward,

not away from, a stone tossed into a pond.

Building With Its Face Blown Off

 - Billy Collins 

How suddenly the private

Is revealed in a bombed-out city,

How the blue and white striped wallpaper

Of a second story bedroom is now

Exposed to the lightly falling snow

As if the room had answered the explosion

Wearing only its striped pajamas.

Some neighbors and soldiers

Poke around in the rubble below

And stare up at the handing staircase,

The portrait of a grandfather,

A door dangling from a single hinge.

And the bathroom looks almost embarrassed

By its uncovered ochre walls,

The twisted mess of its plumbing,

The sink sinking to its knees,

The ripped shower curtain,

The torn goldfish trailing bubbles.

It’s like a dollhouse view

As if a child on its knees could reach in

And pick up the bureau, straighten a picture.

Or it might be a room on a stage

In a play with no characters,

No dialogue or audience,

No beginning, middle and end-

Just the broken furniture in the street,

A shoe among the cinder blocks,

A light snow still falling

On a distant steeple, and people

Crossing a bridge that still stands.

And beyond that- crows in a tree,

The statue of a leader on a horse,

And clouds that look like smoke,

And even farther on, in another country

On a blanket under a shade tree,

A man pouring wine into two glasses

And a woman sliding out

The wooden pegs of a wicker hamper

Filled with bread, cheese, and several kinds of olives.

Curated Bibliography of Texts about Rhizomatc Learning and Leadership

Rhizomatic Redesign (M.A. Reilly 2012)

A few weeks ago a friend, Renee, from NH emailed me to ask if I would mentor her for her individualized learning portion of her dissertation.  She attends Antioch University and is in the process of earning her PhD in Leadership and Change. I was of course thrilled to be a part of this venture especially as she is thinking about rhizomatic leadership which I am keen to think about and theorize alongside Renee.  We will work together for the next 4 to 6 months. Below is the start to some readings we may well do (we'll see what surfaces).  Thought I would share this curated list.


Articles/Chapters

1. Chan, Kirsten Ho. (2011). Rethinking Children’s Participation in Curriculum Making: A Rhizomatic Movement. International Critical Childhood Policy Studies, 4(1) 107-122.
2. Cormier, Dave. (2008). Rhizomatic education: community as curriculum. Innovate: Journal of Online Education. 4 (5).
3. Gough, Noel. (2010). Chapter 2: Performing Imaginative inquiry: Narrative experiments and rhizosemiotic play (pp. 42-60). In Thomas William Nielsen, Rob Fitzgerald & Mark Fettes (Eds.) Imagination in Educational Theory and Practice: A Many-sided Vision. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
4. Gough, Noel. (2006). Rhizosemiotic play and the generativity of fiction. Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education, 3 (1), 119-124.
5. Gough, Noel. (2006). Shaking the tree, making a rhizome: Towards a nomadic geophilosophy of science education. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 38 (5) 625–645.
6. Gough, Noel. (2004). “RhizomANTically Becoming-Cyborg: Performing posthuman pedagogies”. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 36(3), pp. 253–265. 
7. Gregoriou, Z. (2004). “Commencing the Rhizome: Towards a minor philosophy of education”. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 36(3), pp. 233–251.
8. Honan, Eileen. (2007). Writing a rhizome: An (im)plausible methodology. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 20(5), 531-546.
9. Irwin, Rita L.; Beer, Ruth; Springgay, Stephanie; Grauer, Kit; Xiong, Gu; and Bickel, Barbara. (2006). The Rhizomatic Relations of A/r/ tography.  Publications. Paper 4.
10. Leander, Kevin M. & Deborah Wells Rowe. (2006). Mapping literacy spaces in motion: A Rhizomatic analysis of a classroom literacy performance. Reading Research Quarterly, 41 (4), 428-460.
11. Reardon Micahel, Sanzogni, Louis & Arthur Poropat. (2005/2006). Towards a Rhizomatic Method for Knowledge Management. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE MANAGEMENT, 5(5), 159-168.
12. Reilly, M.A. (2014). To enter stone, Be water: Situating literacy coaching as rhizomatic. Reading & Writing Quarterly:Overcoming Learning Difficulties, 30(3), 293-295.
13. Sanford, K., Merkel, L. & Madill, L. (2011). ’There’s no fixed course’: Rhizomatic learning communities in adolescent videogaming. Loading… The Journal of the Canadian Game Studies Association, 5(8), pp. 50-70.
14. Sasser, Tanya. (2012). Bring Your Own Disruption: Rhizomatic Learning in the Composition Class.  Hybrid Pedagogy, 30.12.2012.
15. St.Pierre, E.A. (2004). Deleuzian Concepts for Education: The subject undone. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 36(3), pp. 283–296.
16. Young, Alex Trimble. (2013).  Settler Sovereignty and The Rhizomatic West, or, The Significance of the Frontier in Postwestern Studies. Western American Literature 48:1 & 2, pp. 115 - 139.

Knowmadic Learner (M.A. Reilly, 2012)

Blog Posts/Web/Prezzi/YouTube, etc.

1. Academic Papers via the Mendeley Group: Rhizomatic Learning
2. Cormier, Dave. (2012).  Embracing Uncertainty – Rhizomatic Learning in Formal Education. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJIWyiLyBpQ [Accessed 13.3.2013].
3. Cormier, Dave. (2011). Workers, soldiers or nomads – what does the Gates Foundation want from our education system?
4. Cormier, Dave. (2011). Rhizomatic Learning – Why we teach?
5. Cromier, Dave. & Reilly, M.A. (2011). PlexusCalls - The Rhizome: A New Metaphor for What We Learn and Know. 
6. Crump, Helen. (2014). Rhizomatic learning: metaphors, synergies and semantics #rhizo14
7. Gangi, Jane. (201).  A Brief Introduction to Rhizomatics Via Sheri Leafgren’s Reuben’s Fall
8. Mackness, Jenny. (2014). Principles for Rhizomatic Thinking . 
9. Reilly, M.A. (2013).  The Random and the Intentional: Growing a Business Rhizomatically
10. Reilly, M.A. (2012). Knowmads, Rhizomes, and Minecraft: Exploring the Edges of Learning in a Middle School Classroom (prezi)
11. Reilly, M.A. (2011). Reimagining Learning as Lines of Flight.
12. Reilly, M.A. ( 2011). We Are Pando: Rhizomatic Learning.
13. Steves, Tobey. (2014). Uttering towards otherwise: Students as rhizomatic nomad assemblages.
14. Stewart, Bonnie. (2011). the rhizomatic learning lens & what rhizomes are good for.

Books

1. Cambpell, Neil. (2011). The Rhizomatic West: Representing the American West in a Transnational, Global, Media Age. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska/Bison Books.
2. Cormier, Dave. Making the community the curriculum: Rhizomatic learning in action.
3. Delanda, Manuel. (2002). Intensive science & virtual philosophy. New York: Continuum.
4. Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. (1980). A Thousand Plateaus. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. (pdf)
5. Deeluze, Gilles, & Parnet, Claire. (1987). Dialogues. New York: Columbia University Press.
6. Guattari, Félix. (2008). Chaosophy, New Edition: Text and Interviews 1972-1977. Sylvère Lotringer (Ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
7. Leafgren, Sherri. (2011). Reuben's Fall: A Rhizomatic Analysis of Disobedience in Kindergarten. Walnut Creek, CA: Leaf Coast Press.
8. Maher, Susan Naramore. (2014). Deep Map Country: Literary Cartography of the Great Plains. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska/Bison Books.
9. Reilly, M.A. (2011).  The familiar falling away: A little book of rhizomes. Blurb.

Dissertations

1. Humphreys, Chloe. (2012). Mapping literacy spaces in motion: A Rhizomatic analysis of a classroom literacy performance. Burnbay, BC: Simon Fraser University. 

20+ Picture Books About Women Athletes: Bodies in Motion

1. Adler, David A. (2005). America's Champion Swimmer: Gertrude Ederle. Illustrated by Terry Widener. Orlando, FL: HMH Books for Young Readers.
2. Adler, David A. (2003). Mama Played Baseball. Illustrated by Chris O’Leary. Orlando, FL: Harcourt.
3. Barber, Barbara. (1998). Allie’s Basketball Dream. Illustrated by Darryl Ligasan. New York: Lee & Low Books.
4. Copeland, Misty. (2014). Firebird. Illustrated by Christopher Myers. New York: Putnam Juvenile.
5. Corey, Shana. (2009). Mermaid Queen: The Spectacular True Story Of Annette Kellerman, Who Swam Her Way To Fame, Fortune, & Swimsuit History. Illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham. New York: Scholastic.
6. Corey, Shana. (2003). Players in Pigtails. Illustrated by Rebecca Gibbon. New York: Scholastic.
7. Deans, Karen. (2007). Playing To Win: The Story Of Althea Gibson. Illustrated by Elbrite Brown. New York: Holiday House.
8. Govenar, Alan. (2006). Stompin’ at the Savoy: The Story of Norma Miller. Illustrated by Martin French. Somervile, MA: Candlewick.
9. Green, Michelle Y.  (2004). A Strong Right Arm: The Story of Mamie "Peanut" Johnson Paperback. Illustrated by Kadir Nelson. New York: Puffin.
10. Hopkinson, Deborah. (2006).  Girl Wonder: A Baseball Story in Nine Innings. Illustrated by Terry Widener. New York: Aladdin.
11. Hubbard, Crystal. (2005). Catching the Moon: The Story of a Young Girl's Baseball Dream. Illustrated by Randy DuBurck. New York: Lee & Low Books.
12. Krull, Kathleen. (2000). Wilma Unlimited: How Wilma Rudolph Became The World's Fastest Woman. Illustrated by David Diaz. Orlando, FL: HMH Books for Young Readers.
13. Kuklin, Susan & Sheryl Swoopes. (2001).  Hoops With Swoopes. Illustrated by Susan Kuklin. New York: Jump at the Sun.
14. Lang, Heather. (2012). Queen of the Track. Illustrated by Floyd Cooper. Honesdale, PA: Boyds Mills Press.
15. Malaspina, Ann. (2012). Touch the Sky: Alice Coachman, Olympic High Jumper. Illustrated by Eric Velasquez. Albert Whitman & Company.
16. McCarthy, Megan. (2013). Daredevil: The Daring Life of Betty Skelton. New York: Simon & Schuster/Paula Wiseman Books.
17. Moss, Marissa. (2004). Mighty Jackie: The Strike-Out Queen. Illustrated by C.F. Payne. New York: Simon & Schuster/Paula Wiseman Books.
18. Rappaport, Doreen & Lyndall Callan. (2000). Dirt On Their Skirts: The Story Of The Young Women Who Won The World Of Championship. Illustrated by E.B. Lewis. New York: Dial.
19. Rosenstock, Barb. (2010). Fearless: The Story Of Racing Legend Louise Smith. Illustrated by Scott Dawson. New York: Dutton.
20. Stauffacher, Sue. (2011). Tillie the Terrible Swede: How One Woman, a Sewing Needle, and a Bicycle Changed History. Illustrated by Sarah McMenemy. New York: Alfred Knopf.
21. Tallchief, Maia & Rosemary Wells. (2001). Tallchief: America’s Prima Ballerina. Illustrated by Gary Kelley. New York: Puffin.
22. Stauffacher, Sue. (2011). Nothing But Trouble: The Story of Althea Gibson. Illustrated by Greg Couch. New York: Dragonfly Books.

f

23. Vernick, Audrey. (2010). She Loved Baseball: The Effa Manley Story. Illustrated by Don Tate. New York: Balzer + Bray.