Day One-Training of Trainers with Gretchen Bernabei

Today I attended the Gretchen Bernabei workshop. I really enjoyed the day. The attendees went through many prewriting strategies like making quick lists, quickwrites,  exploring the memory kernel essay, sharing our writing in groups of three, delving into two indelible moments using a telephone note pad, and writing paper that is used in the primary aged classrooms.  We also revisited the BADABING, the elastic kernel, and coloring up essays.  We also shared sentences from our writing and made comments using Sparkling Sentences. I really liked that because we used the raw materials from the writers and then we had to use analysis to explain what we liked about it. We were looking for craft and naming it. Thus we began to own it.

I really liked the revisiting of the elastic kernel. We made a trifold where we took what we wrote about in our first quick write and then tried to think of that topic in light of an expository essay. We then did the same thing with regards how that topic might appear in the argumentation or persuasive form.  I immediately thought of multigenre reading and writing. Meaning dictates form. The writer must decide what form to use for the reader. It is a narrative form? Is it a poem? Is it an expository piece?  It all depends. That can be the case for the reader as well. What does the reader expect to see from the piece if it is a poem, narrative, expository, or persuasive piece?  Meaning dictates form. What do I wish to convey and what structure do I choose?  That is what I was thinking about today when the elastic kernel was discussed. The use of the Analysis Pyramid by Alana Morris would go very well with the elastic kernel.

 

We also observed ways to add detail to the kernel essay. There were different stations where we looked at the use of flipbooks, chunking the kernels on single pieces of paper, and adding and identifying the use of the writer's tools in student writing using icons. I would really like to delve more into the flip books. I had used them in the past for narrative writing with students and teachers. I would, however, like to use them with expository kernels as well. In addition to that, using them with icons is something I want to try out more.

When we wrote using an artifact or stimulus with the indelible moment, it brought me back to a workshop that I had presented a couple of summers ago. We had explored the indelible moment using the telephone note pads. They were the exact kind that I used. We wrote about an moment associated with a phone call and shared out. We then wrote on lined paper that a first or second grader might use to write. We then wrote about a school memory. I enjoyed doing that. She shared student work on coffee filters and paper plates. My students did that this year. We used paper plates and wrapping paper. These were all great stimuli from which to write.

All in all, this was a good day. We will see what tomorrow brings.