April 2023
In this issue:
On Saturday, April 1, the Oklahoma Literacy Association held their annual spring conference with a keynote address from Carol Jago and a lunch speech from Oklahoma author Alton Carter. Jago's keynote was titled "Reading and Writing in the Digital Age" and included reminders to integrate reading, writing, speaking, and listening; to teach writing as a process; and to extend the range of students' reading and writing experiences.
I presented two different breakout sessions. The first one I co-presented with my colleague Sharon Morgan, the Director of Elementary English Language Arts. Our presentation was titled "Unlocking Complex Text in the Intermediate Grades." Teachers of students in grades 4-9 will benefit most from this presentation.
I also presented a session titled "Launching Reading and Writing with Poetry." This presentation shares examples of types of questions that students can ask about a text and then provides real student samples for teachers to use in a lesson about a poem.
Melissa Ahlgrim, Director of Reading Sufficiency Act, and Mary Mazariegos, Executive Director of Literacy, were also in attendance. If we can support your literacy needs, please contact us at https://sde.ok.gov/ela-contacts.
 Melissa Ahlgrim, Mary Mazariegos, Sharon Morgan, & me
Become an Oklahoma State Writing Project Teacher Consultant and join a community of prestigious educators seeking to empower other teachers! Teachers of all subjects and grade levels are invited to collaborate and learn about the teaching of writing, as well as develop their own skills as a writer.
This year's Summer Institute will serve as a launch for a year-round cohort. Teachers will meet on the OSU-Tulsa campus from June 20 - June 23, then begin monthly check-in meetings in July with our first meeting on Wednesday, July 12. Many of our monthly meetings after the summer will be on Zoom, with a few face-to-face fun continuity events throughout the school year. We will have also two pre-institute meetings on Saturday, May 20 and Saturday, June 10. Check-ins & Zoom meeting times will be further solidified during Pre-Summer Institute.
This year's theme: Embracing Your Journey
Together we will focus on how teachers can utilize writing for themselves and in the classroom with students to illuminate the past, amplify the voices of the present, and bring justice in the future.
The OSU Writing Project Summer Institute is a 3-hour graduate education course. Scholarships provided for those accepted to cover the cost of the class.
Applications are due by Monday, April 10, 2023
Online application link
The 2023 National Poetry Month poster was designed by Marc Brown, creator of the popular Arthur book and PBS television series. You can request a free physical copy of the poster, or download a PDF on this webpage. The poster features a line from Ada Limón's poem "The Carrying": ...we were all meant for something.
The sky’s white with November’s teeth,
and the air is ash and woodsmoke.
A flush of color from the dying tree,
a cargo train speeding through, and there,
that’s me, standing in the wintering
grass watching the dog suffer the cold
leaves. I’m not large from this distance,
just a fence post, a hedge of holly.
Wider still, beyond the rumble of overpass,
mares look for what’s left of green
in the pasture, a few weanlings kick
out, and theirs is the same sky, white
like a calm flag of surrender pulled taut.
A few farms over, there’s our mare,
her belly barrel-round with foal, or idea
of foal. It’s Kentucky, late fall, and any
mare worth her salt is carrying the next
potential stake’s winner. Ours, her coat
thicker with the season’s muck, leans against
the black fence and this image is heavy
within me. How my own body, empty,
clean of secrets, knows how to carry her,
knows we were all meant for something.
I notice this free verse poem is one long stanza, twenty-three lines total. (Stanza is Italian for "room.") The setting is Kentucky, and I know they have the Kentucky Derby there, but I wonder if my students would know about that as well as other horse-related and Derby-related words like weanlings, mare, foal, and stake. I would note them and provide their meanings to students before we tackled the poem together. I notice how the poems zooms in and out of the Kentucky fields and how the poster nicely captures one of the pictures. I like the final sentence of the poem, but it has an air of mystery to me. I want to know what my students think about those lines as well. It's rare for a poem to directly state a theme like this one does in the final line, the one featured on the poster.
Poetry is meant to be read aloud, and students need an opportunity to read and listen to enjoyable, accessible poetry. I recently had such an opportunity when Pulitzer-prize winning poet Jericho Brown shared his poetry at two readings in Oklahoma City as part of Oklahoma City University's annual Thatcher Hoffman Smith poetry series.
Jericho is the inventor of the duplex poetry form, which is a mixture of the sonnet, the ghazal, and the blues.
In his most recent poetry collection, he used lines from all of his duplex poems and created a duplex that was also a cento. (This month's writing prompt explains what a cento is.)
There are plenty of audio clips and videos of poets reading their work for you to include in your lessons this month. Hop on poets.org or YouTube and see what you can find by searching for some of your favorite poets.
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April is National Poetry Month. Some teachers wait until this month to focus on poetry, but others use poetry throughout the school year in various units and lessons. Our Oklahoma Academic Standards for English Language Arts include poetry for grades 6-12 in Standard 2's reading strand.
My friends know that I am big poetry fan. Not only do I like to read poetry, but I also like to write it. I usually participate in the monthly open mic hosted by Red Dirt Poetry in Oklahoma City. I first learned about the poets at Red Dirt when I was asked to write an article for the 2017 spring/summer issue of the Oklahoma Humanities magazine about the local poetry scene in Oklahoma City. That issue is available for free, and my article is titled "The Poet Has Spoken."
If you are in need of some additional poetry resources, here are some tried-and-true websites:
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Recharge this summer with some free virtual writing camps focused on the three modes of writing from the OAS-ELA: narrative, informative, and argumentative. The camps are three days long, Tuesday through Thursday, and will meet from 9:00-10:30 a.m. on Zoom.
- Day 1: Writing the mode (Engage in prompts and activities for the mode.)
- Day 2: Teaching the mode (Study mentor texts and learn mini-lessons about the mode.)
- Day 3: Assessing the mode (Reflect on student-friendly writing checklists and teacher feedback samples for the mode.)
These camps are dedicated to Oklahoma's secondary ELA teachers. Sign up for as many camps as you want, and come prepared to write and learn alongside your colleagues from all over the state. Please register in advance at the following links:
It is best if you can attend all three days, but if you have a conflict or two, you can still attend part of the week. Questions? Contact Jason Stephenson at the email below.
The Jewish Federations of Tulsa and Greater Oklahoma City, to satisfy the recommendations of Senate Bill 1671 making Holocaust education available to every
Oklahoma student grades 6-12, will be presenting free workshops in June. Teachers can choose between June 15 in Oklahoma City or June 16 in Tulsa. Participants will receive 7 hours of professional development credit. See flyer below along with a message from the workshop director.
Register today!
 Our presenters include classroom teachers with years of Holocaust teaching experience who will share their successful lessons that can easily be implemented into your classrooms.
Please join us for a day of learning that will also include testimonies from a Holocaust survivor and a second-generation descendant of two survivors. More specific details of the conference schedule to follow.
Sincere thanks for your interest in Holocaust Education,
Nancy Pettus
Senate Bill 1671 Director of Professional Development
Writing Prompt
From the Latin word for “patchwork,” the cento (or collage poem) is a poetic form composed entirely of lines from poems by other poets.
Find 10-14 lines of poetry you like. They can be lines from other poets, lines you yourself have written, or a combination. It's best if they all come from different poems. As an added challenge, only choose lines that have 9-11 syllables. Then arrange the lines into a new poem. Voila! You have created a cento, a form once used by Homer and Virgil.
Poetry Quote
 Full poem: "Introduction to Poetry" by Billy Collins
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