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News
Notes #2
updates for participant schools
2/7/05
In
this News Notes:
First Week of the Project!
 Last
Tuesday was the 103rd birthday of Langston
Hughes! In our school, we happened to celebrate
with cupcakes and some background on Langston. One great short biography of Langston
Hughes is at
The Academy of American Poets site that was
listed last week.
A few schools have been
memorizing our theme poem, "The
Dream Keeper." With our sixth graders, it only
took about five or so minutes of call and
response to memorize it. (Click
here for
our low quality recording of 54 sixth graders.)
As
we begin the project, it's a good time to share
ideas on how we use Hughes poems in our
classrooms. If you like, take a few seconds to
send along your ideas to
dreamflags@agnesirwin.org.
We've listed some ideas on using poems found in
The Dream Keeper under Poem Ideas.
In Dream
Flag Project news this week, we can tell you
that a new school in Atlanta, Georgia has joined
in, so we welcome The Lovett School. This brings
our number of participant groups to 36. More on
on sharing with another school in
Mentor Schools Program.
Also,
the percussionist Ron Kravitz, who performed
improvisational music at our Regional Dream Flag
Celebration last year, will be able to join us
again this year on April 16th. This is great
news! More on this and some ideas about the
April 16th event in The Dream Flag Celebration
in April.
We hope
that everyone has had a great start to the
project and has an exciting second week.
-- Jeff
Harlan and Sandy Crow
Poem Ideas
 Here
are some classroom ideas for some of the Langston
Hughes poems found in the anthology The Dream
Keeper. (More may be added later.) Most of
these are geared for upper elementary or middle
school students. The ideas are not necessarily
about dream poems or writing them, but are aimed
at helping students to understand and experience
the way pomes work. This may help them as poetry
writers as well.
Many of the
ideas listed here are ways to use activity or
discussion to help students understand the wonderful
uses of rhythm, patterns, and metaphor in the poetry
of Langston Hughes. Most include related poetry
writing assignments. The
activities are not offered in any recommended
order. They are just listed as they appear in the
anthology.
The Dream Keeper
(page 2)
This is a great poem to memorize since it's
short and uses repetition. For discussion,
it's a good one for looking at imagery and
imagination. What is a heart melody?
Can you really wrap dreams? Why did he say a
blue cloud-cloth? Does the world have
fingers? What would you consider things that
you would put in the too-rough fingers of
the world?
Joanne Sutton-Smith, a poet who worked with
first graders at Swarthmore Ruttledge School last
year, used this poem as a metaphor for
collecting and sharing dream pomes. She
found a bolt of flannel cloth at a fabric
store with a blue and white cloud pattern.
She brought in some of this cloth, and her
first graders placed poems on the cloth,
reading them and explaining how they were
putting something special away from the
too-rough fingers of the world.
Click for a printable view of of this activity
and activities for the following fifteen poems:
Dreams (page 4)
April Rain Song (page 6)
Poem
(page 12) ~for older readers
Walkers With the Dawn (page 56)
Dream Variation (page 57)
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
(page 62)
I, Too
(page 63) ~for older readers
Mother To Son
(64)
Youth
(page 65)
As I Grew Older (page 70-71)
African Dance
(page 72)
Dream Dust
(page 76)
Daybreak in Alabama (page 77)
Merry-Go-Round (page 79)
In Time of Silver Rain
(page 80)
Mentor Schools Program Becomes
Partner Schools Program
The mentor schools program is a matching of
"old" Dream Flag Schools (participants in 2004) with
"new" Dream Flag Schools (first-time participants in
2005.) The idea is to encourage one-on-one sharing
between schools and to offer another way for new
schools to get tips on having a great experience in
the project. As the Dream Flag Project is continuing
to grow, we don't have enough returning schools to
go around, so we're expanding the idea to Partner
Schools. We are still in the process of contacting
some schools about becoming partner schools. If you
have not been contacted about becoming a mentor or
partner school and would like to be, please let us
know.
As a
curricular program, The Dream Flag Project may not
be that unusual EXCEPT that it helps
us find connections between schools that we would
not otherwise have. This connection of teachers to
teachers, students to students, is probably the
most valuable part of our project, and we're trying
to build on that with the mentor school program.
To give our students the experience of being part of
a community of writers is a way to focus their
attention on writing and learning experience and to
create the kind of social understanding that helps
everyone.
Here are a
few things that are happening so far with
mentor/partner schools:
- We sent
emails to returning schools inviting them to be
mentor schools. Almost all accepted the
invitation.
- We sent
emails to new schools to inform them that there
was a returning school willing to help out.
- Many
lead teachers from returning schools have
contacted the new schools and new schools have
responded.
- In some
cases, schools have discussed a visit from one
school to another to share poetry or other
creative work like percussion performance.
If you have
any ideas about how to work with a partner school,
please let us know.
The Dream Flag Celebration
in April
Though it seems a long time
away (and is), we're doing some planning for The
2005 Dream Flag Celebration on April 16th at
Philadelphia's Kimmel Center for the Performing
Arts. There is an important point for everyone to
know:
- We
would like to include ALL participant
groups, whether they are in the Philadelphia
region or not, by inviting them to send
poems that can be read at the celebration. We
will video the Celebration and make it available
on the web. While we hope everyone will have the
chance to share and celebrate Dream Flags within
their schools, this gives us a way to create an
experience we all share.
Some
Background on The 2004 Regional Dream Flag
Celebration:
Last year, this was a gathering at the Kimmel Center
in Philadelphia for all schools who were able to
send representative students. (The
Kimmel Center is one of Philadelphia's main
performance spaces.) Teachers, students, parents,
musicians, and the general public came together for
a program from 12-1:30 that featured singing,
readings by 50 students poets, musical accompaniment,
and the physical connection of more than 2,000 dream
flags around the lobby of the Kimmel Center. (Click
here if you want to see the nine-minute video of
the '04 Celebration at the Kimmel Center--PC only,
I'm afraid.)
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