Episode 255: Elementary School Bookworms Aspire to Become Authors

Anthony Godfrey:
Hello and welcome to the Supercast. I'm your host, Superintendent Anthony Godfrey. You could say they are young bookworms aspiring to become authors.

On this episode of the Supercast, we take you inside Barbara Stevens' 5th-grade classroom at South Jordan Elementary School, where the Wit and Wisdom language arts curriculum is helping students develop a love for language. In fact, Mrs. Stevens got them so excited about reading and writing, they decided to use their talents to become young authors. Listen and find out how.

We are at South Jordan Elementary School talking with Mrs. Stevens and some of her students about their Wit and Wisdom project. Introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about Wit and Wisdom and what's been going on.

Barbara Stevens:
Okay, so we were eager to get going on the Wit and Wisdom curriculum. The first book that we tried was in Module 2 called The Phantom Tollbooth, a book which I had actually not read before. It was fun because it started with the Abbott and Costello and talked about wordplay and how to play on words. You know, “Who's on First”, and they did that whole skit and analyzed it.

Then we jumped into the book, which does a lot of wordplay as well. And in there they had, you would name the characters crazy things like, they went to the abandoned elementary school and the principal was Mrs. McQuitter, or she was the mayor. So we took an exploded moment and modeled and wrote in that style.

At first, I was really nervous when I told the kids. I don't usually let kids write in dialogue a lot. I let them write one-time dialogue, but this was like dialogue back and forth, back and forth. We had to teach them their separate paragraphs for each person who talks and all the commas, and the periods, and the quotation marks. I was hesitant to teach that, but we went ahead and they ended up actually loving it. Loving it so much that they were like, let's do more and I had to put extra credit. Okay, extra credit. You can do another one. Okay, extra credit. And so, yeah, I'll let them share their experience because they did really love the creative work that was behind it.

Anthony Godfrey:
So there were opportunities for them to learn exactly how to write dialogue with all the tools, all the punctuation that goes with that.

Barbara Stevens:
Yes, it was embedded into the curriculum. And, you know, I've been teaching for a bazillion years, but I had never done that before, so I really had a little bit of cold feet about it.

Anthony Godfrey:
Let's talk about your bazillion years of teaching. I know that you've taught in other states, other schools.

Barbara Stevens:
I actually am a retired teacher from Denver Public Schools.

Anthony Godfrey:
Okay.

Barbara Stevens:
And then decided to come back and Mr. Eardley was kind enough to give me an opportunity to come back with some people I already knew here. And, yeah, I'm back in the classroom.

Anthony Godfrey:
And you are an early adopter of Wit and Wisdom. So as a retired teacher who worked in another district, I really admire that you're diving in on a new program. Tell me, just for those listening who may not understand what Wit and Wisdom is, tell us a little bit about what that involves and why that brought you to the Phantom Tollbooth as a result.

Barbara Stevens:
Yeah. Well, I kind of enjoy the curriculum because it takes you into places that you haven't been before, you know. I mean, even myself doing something I had never done before, I grew and the kids grew from it, and we benefited together, learning together. Wit and Wisdom has four modules. It was just brought in, just adopted this year, right?

Anthony Godfrey:
Right.

Barbara Stevens:
And then we went ahead and jumped into module three with the wordplay unit. We've actually moved on now into the Civil War unit, so we're doing expository once again, which is kind of a grim reality after doing wordplay.

Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah, right. Right.

Barbara Stevens:
But we really enjoyed just the opportunity that this curriculum has taken us into learning new things.

Anthony Godfrey:
It's part of the literacy curriculum, but it covers a lot of other topics, connects it to a lot of other subjects, and provides all the books that go along with those lessons.

Barbara Stevens:
Yes, and it has language arts embedded into it as well. There's a little language arts lesson attached to each lesson as well. We have writing and reading, yeah.

Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah, writing and reading and...

Barbara Stevens:
And language arts.

Anthony Godfrey:
All bundled together.

Barbara Stevens:
And, did I forget, social studies.

Anthony Godfrey:
Right.

Barbara Stevens:
Because right now we're in Civil War, and we'll do Chief Joseph for the first module next year.

Anthony Godfrey:
And when you can layer all of those things and connect them to each other–

Barbara Stevens:
Oh, it's amazing. I love the way it has content that you can sink your teeth into, you know, that you really are learning content at the same time you're learning skills.

Anthony Godfrey:
Whereas in the past sometimes it was just disparate paragraphs and isolated sentences that didn't really connect to broader meaning, but now you described well just how layered that learning can be.

Barbara Stevens:
Exactly. We were doing noticings and wonderings that we were doing in social studies, and they were looking at this book on the Civil War, and I said, "What kind of noticings do you have?" And Lily raised her hand, she's not here, but she said, "Yeah, I'm noticing that history is a dark place." I said, "Yeah, it can be."

Anthony Godfrey:
Yes, it can be.

Barbara Stevens:
It's a good noticing.

Anthony Godfrey:
Yes, it can be. Tell me again about the exploded moments. What exactly does that involve?

Barbara Stevens:
Yeah, so back to Phantom Tollbooth, they had to have a character that was out of Abandon Elementary School, so they had to pick a name of the character that would go to a school that was like an abandoned elementary school. So it was a play on words with that, and they had to have dialogue back and forth with someone at the school, and they had to have a little problem that they would overcome and a little situation that they were in.

Anthony Godfrey:
Okay.

Barbara Stevens:
Yeah, using wordplay.

Anthony Godfrey:
What can you tell me, what's the overview of the Phantom Tollbooth? What's it about?

Barbara Stevens:
It's about a boy who is lackadaisical, he's not passionate about anything. Then he goes into an adventure, into a made-up land, I guess, and he meets all the Lethagarians.

Anthony Godfrey:
The Lethagarians?

Barbara Stevens:
Yeah, he goes into the Doldrums and he meets the Lethagarians, and he learns to start thinking for himself, which gets the wheels moving on his car so he can move. He goes to Dictionopolis and Digitopolis, and he rescues Rhyme and Reason at the end. And so it's all play on words, very whimsical.

Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah. Sounds fun.

Stay with us. When we come back, students from Mrs. Stevens' classroom read some of their writing.

Break:
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Anthony Godfrey:
Let's talk to the students about their experiences with the book. So tell me your name and tell me your favorite part of the book.

Noah:
My name's Noah, and my favorite part was all the adventure. It had a lot of adventure and the quests from it.

Anthony Godfrey:
Okay, awesome.

Lizzie:
My name's Lizzie, and my favorite part is when Milo meets Tock, the watchdog.

Anthony Godfrey:
Okay. Milo meets Tock, the watchdog. Okay. Tick tock, as in tick tock, yeah? Okay.

Halle:
I'm Halle, and my favorite part is when he goes into the Doldrums because he's just so adventurous.

Benson:
My name is Benson, and my favorite part is probably all the things you have to do to get out of Trouble.

Anthony Godfrey:
So it sounds like there's wordplay throughout the book, and is it kind of a puzzle to be solved a little bit, it sounds like? Okay. Tell me, can you think of some of the wordplay, some of the puns or the jokes in the book that you thought were particularly funny?

Noah:
Yeah, in all the characters, they would have a name, and like on Tock, he was a watchdog, and he had a watch inside his body, and he'd keep track of all the time, and he'd get mad when somebody would kill time or waste time.

Anthony Godfrey:
Oh, okay. Wow. Kill time, waste time, and a watchdog. I've never thought of all those things together. That's awesome. How about you?

Lizzie:
When Milo jumped to conclusions, he actually jumped to the island Conclusions.

Anthony Godfrey:
I need to read this book. This sounds so cool. Okay, tell me your favorite.

Halle:
Their names was probably my favorite because they were just so like, you would never really think of them that much.

Barbara Stevens:
I remember you really liked the demons when they showed up. They had a Tenacious Tedium where they got stuck doing tedious tasks and couldn't get out. He was one of the demons.

Anthony Godfrey:
Wow. Very cool.

Benson:
My probably was the demons that would like, they would have different names for their reasons why. Like, you have to do that.

Anthony Godfrey:
Okay. Okay, cool. Wow. This sounds like quite a book. So, we're going to start right over here with Noah, and I'd like you to talk about what writing project you chose and then read like a favorite paragraph of yours, a favorite part of what you wrote.

Noah:
It was fun. You had to make up your own teacher, student, principal, whatever, and my mine was a teacher and it's Mr. Disorder and I'll read a little bit of mine.

Anthony Godfrey:
Mr. Disorder? Yeah. Okay.

Noah:
It was always out of order.

Anthony Godfrey:
Okay.

Noah:
My name is Milo and this is Tock answering Milo.

‘So far he did not like the classroom. There were also a lot of ungraded papers on the teacher's desk. “Hi” grumbled Tock. “Why is there nobody in the classroom, Mr. Disorder?”

“Why? I just let them go early. School is just a waste of time. Learning is useless. It's a piece of cake, not learning everything.” answered Mr. Disorder as he was walking across the room.”’

Anthony Godfrey:
Awesome. I love that. Noah, do you hear idioms and wordplay differently having read this book and gone through these lessons with Mrs. Stevens?

Noah:
Yeah. Learning, well, all of it means more.

Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah. Do you notice them more than you used to?

Noah:
A lot.

Anthony Godfrey:
Okay, Lizzie, tell us about what paragraph you wrote.

Lizzie:
My paragraph was about Mr. Deserted who's a teacher and Milo joined his class.

“Mr. Deserted, can I speak with you?” Milo questioned.

“What do you need, kid?” He grunted in reply.

“Why did you give everyone an F-? I worked hard. I at least got one right. It's like you didn't even try. Did you?” Milo whispered in his sad voice.

“I didn't. It's way easier, kid. You'll learn that someday.” Mr. Deserted replied in a deep, booming voice.

“But then they have nothing to look forward to after all that hard work!” Milo shouted in anger as he clenched his fists.

Anthony Godfrey:
What was your idiom?

Lizzie:
It's later on.

Anthony Godfrey:
Okay, it's later on.

Lizzie:
It's Mr. Deserted.

“Mr. Deserted looked around clearly not wanting to spill the beans.”

Anthony Godfrey:
That's really good dialogue and you read it very well also. I could see that you had really thought through those characters. That's great. Okay, Halle, tell us about your passage here that you wrote.

Halle:
So mine is about where I named this kid Quitter and it's about where the demon meets Quitter and Milo. My favorite paragraph is,

"Milo, if we die, tell my mom and dad that I love them and that I don't know why I have bad grades. I like to finish every assigned paper halfway through," said Quitter faintly.

“Okay, I will. And if I die, tell my mom and dad I love them too”, said Milo.

Anthony Godfrey:
Very nice. Lots of drama in just those few lines. There's a lot going on. And I've said paragraph, but there's a new paragraph for every line, as Mrs. Stevens so clearly pointed out. So did you find that making new paragraphs and putting all that punctuation in was difficult at first but got easier along the way? Okay, Benson, read your passage to us and tell us what you wrote about.

Benson:
So I wrote about my character as a teacher, Mr. Left, and he did not like to finish things all the way.

‘Milo and Tock and Mr. Left were in a dark and gloomy school with bad food. While Milo turned to Mr. Left and asked, "Why do you like reading books?"

“Because you can learn a lot from them,” said Mr. Left, as he closed the door and came back to his chair.’

Anthony Godfrey:
Very cool. Mr. Left, I like that because there's always things left undone. This seems like really fun schoolwork. Tell me what it's like to be in Mrs. Stevens' class. I'll bet a lot of fun things happen in there. Tell me about what it's like to be in her class.

Noah:
It's a lot of fun because you get to read the book and you have the lesson for every chapter, and you can review all of it and understand it more.

Lizzie:
Mrs. Stevens explains the lessons clearly so we know exactly what to do.

Halle:
We have a lot of fun doing projects in school, and sometimes we can work with partners, and it makes me want to look forward to school.

Benson:
She's helped me become a better writer and typing.

Anthony Godfrey:
Well, you're all very lucky to be in her class, I can tell you that. Talking about exploding moments, is there a favorite moment in class that you can think of? She's teaching you a lot, that's for sure. Any moments you want to explode?

Noah:
All of the writing projects, and we have to make up our own characters and their personalities.

Barbara Stevens:
I really like the way they just sparked up once the book got to the demons. They were like, "Oh, forget this Abandon Elementary, we want to write about the demons." That was interesting because I said, "Yeah, go ahead, you can do it in your extra credit, get those demons in there." Then later in the curriculum, we saw that they were going to do another exploding moment with the demons. I think the curriculum knew where they would be, peaking their interest.

Anthony Godfrey:
Good.

Barbara Stevens:
You guys like the demons.

Anthony Godfrey:
Well, you all did a great job writing. Aside from the writing and the reading, what are some other things that you've loved in Mrs. Stevens' class?

Noah:
Science. We get to do a lot of projects in science. The other years we don't really do a lot of stuff, but now we actually get to do it in real life.

Anthony Godfrey:
Hands-on, real experiments.

Barbara Stevens:
Most of that is FOSS. It's the district curriculum.

Anthony Godfrey:
Great.

Barbara Stevens:
Still sticking with the curriculum.

Anthony Godfrey:
Awesome. Fantastic.

Barbara Stevens:
They're growing the wheatgrass right now and got the worm habitats going. The butterflies are coming next.

Anthony Godfrey:
Worm habitats. I must have been sick for the worm habitat part of fifth grade. I missed out on that.

Lizzie:
I like social studies and we always do Kahoots before the real test.

Anthony Godfrey:
Oh, yeah. I love Kahoots. Do you get more points if you're fast on the Kahoot?

Lizzie:
Yeah.

Anthony Godfrey:
How about for you?

Halle:
I also like social studies because you can learn more about the history and everything behind it.

Benson:
I probably like science too because of all the fun activities we get to do. When we get to see catterpillars turn into butterflies or have the worms get bigger.

Anthony Godfrey:
What's one of your favorite moments from this year?

Barbara Stevens:
Well, I love this class. We have a really good cohesive class. They're great kids. I think one of our passions is we do a lot of history. We talk a lot about history. That's why I was so excited about Witten Wisdom because I love history. It takes it deeper by having the content in your reading and writing program. It fits pretty much hand in glove with the way we like to learn, the way we like to teach. I've been excited about that.

We also do nature walks, don't we? We like to go on nature walks. We've done one down to the fishing ponds. We do rotations there. This was in FOSS. They like to have a nature part at the end of their investigations. We walk the neighborhood sometimes. We had a fun time when we walked the neighborhood. We were supposed to look for landforms that were made with natural resources. We came across Sawyer's house on that walk. He had a bunny in the backyard. Halle caught the bunny. It was his pet bunny that he just kept in the backyard. It's kind of a good moment. That was fun. We did it again the next week.

Anthony Godfrey:
Lots of great things happening. That's really cool. I think you all realize just how lucky you are to be in Mrs. Stevens' class. We're very lucky to have her here at South Jordan Elementary. I'm lucky to get to sit with you and hear your writing and hear about your experiences in fifth grade. I think you're all fantastic authors and great learners. Thank you so much for spending time with me today.

Thanks for joining us on another episode of the Supercast. Remember, education is the mos important thing you will do today. We'll see you out there.