Situating Time And Mining The Ordinary

By Author: Arsenalo
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In response to 145th Street, students create a character chart tracing characters' actions across each of the stories and then analyzing the characters across time and at particular points in time. This analysis of text through diachronic and synchronic methods informs students' learning throughout the school year. "In the opening story, 'Big Joe's Funeral,' we meet characters we will come to read about as the book unfolds. I want kids thinking about what these characters might be doing while off camera," explains Mr. Krantzman. "Their lives have been continuing. What's been happening"
One might surmise that Mr. Krantzman similarly wants his students to understand their own work as learners through diachronic and synchronic analysis and, as such, creates conditions for such reflection, such as the Replica Tag Heuer midyear essay. For example, Sofia recognizes that her understanding of poetry and herself as a poet has changed. Sofia writes that in previous years she "[DJespised all types of poetry. I was convinced that I couldn't write it and ...
... that poetry made no sense."

Through classroom engagements and lectures, Sofia explains that she is a more confident writer now who can employ methods to help her make sense of her reading and writing: The reason I didn't understand poetry is that I didn't have a way to look at it. After reading and writing so many poems, I understand language and poetry better. Writing poetry has taught me how to manipulate language in order to create images. I know how to enjoy poetry. Sofia's last poem for the portfolio is based on a rereading of her notebook that she had begun in September. Mr. Krantzman explains, It's neither a reader's nor a writer's notebook, but rather a place where you think on paper. I don't separate them. I start by having students develop territories (Atwell, 1998). I want them to build stamina and speed. The only homework they have at the beginning of the school year is 20 minutes of writing per night, five nights a week. They can write about whatever as long as it is not a diary entry. They generally can't sustain 20 minutes, so I ask them to begin gradually starting at about 10 minutes and build. What I notice is that most will have difficulty after a week or two. They say they can't think of what to write about. I keep the assignment, and as they push through this having nothing to say, their writing changes.

He explains that after having difficulty generating topics, students begin to notice the world around them, making use of very ordinary observations. It is when the notebooks are well anchored that Mr. Krantzman asks students to Replica Tag Heuer return to mine for ideas for poems. "I tell them to go back to their territories. Reread your notebook and pull some poetry out of what you have done."
In Sofia's notebook poem "Rollercoaster," she unifies the poem by repeating a line, '"Round and 'round we go, where we stop no one knows." The idea of a unifying motif has been emphasized by Krantzman throughout the first marking period in their study of Cisneros's and Myers's texts and is present in Sofia's thinking. Sofia writes, "After I wrote down the things I saw come up, I thought of a carousel or a rollercoaster, hence the name Rollercoaster."

Perhaps most dominant in this poem, though, is Sofia's attempt to make use of white space (see Figure 4), again a technique Mr. Krantzman taught and Sofia saw present in the Cage text. Sofia explains, I also applied a little of what I learned from Cage here with my spacing to create dramatic pauses. From far away it looks like an odd paper with writing in random places, but once you read it, it makes sense. I had never really written a poem like this one with a line that kind of tied everything together. '"Round and 'round we go, where we stop no one knows."