What’s the author’s purpose for this post? Defend your answer. 2. One post is titled NEIL ARMSTRONG, Which two boards does it fit under…Social Studies, Science, or Language Arts? 3. Look at My Reads: Picture book reviews. Name one book that I might I have picked to match my blog. (Hint: one is fiction, and the other is nonfiction.) Answers are at the end of this post. Teachers, parents, kids, do you ever need to research something? I do, for my stories and for this blog. If you’re looking for sources, check out this link to my Pinterest boards https://www.pinterest.com/rindabeach/ All my posts are there. If you want a paper copy, just email. They’re all saved on my hard drive. I have 30 pins or posts on my social studies board. Each pin tells which strand it covers. Some fit multiple strands. I used Ohio social studies standards, but they should fit other states too. Ohio strands include: Economic, Geography, Government, and History. The picture and the title will give you an idea into what the pin is about. Just scan to find what you need. My science board has 16 pins. Most of them fall under life or earth/space science. I have one that fits under physical/ STEM science. Just scan the posts, I hope you’ll find something helpful and interesting. I have 17 pins on my language arts board about things like editing, author visits, and story research. If you don’t see something you’re looking for, please email. I’ll add your suggestion to my list of ideas for future posts. Please feel free to email or comment on any post, no matter how old. I love getting mail! To be a writer, you also have to be a reader. You read only new books, published in the last 2-3 years. It helps you understand what publishers want. Agents are interested in what you read too. If you're interviewed, they’ll ask what you read. It tells them about you as a person, and as a writer. If you’re looking for great books, please check out My Reads: Picture book reviews. These are my favorite new picture books. All 33 can be found at my library in Wapak. Where ever you live, I hope you’ll check them out too! Looking for new chapter books? Check out My Reads: Chapter book reviews and its 16 pins. Each week I match My Reads with My Blog. If you're looking for the newest fiction or nonfiction title for a topic, check out My Reads. Happy reading from Pinterest, and from rindabeach.com! A Little More Research…Ants, Please! 1. What’s the author’s purpose for this post? Defend your answer. The author’s purpose is to persuade. She’s trying to convince you to check out her posts to research information, and to find new books. 2. One post is titled NEIL ARMSTRONG, Which two boards does it fit under…Social Studies, Science, or Language Arts?. Social Studies and Science 3. Look at My Reads: Picture book reviews. Name at least one book that I might I have picked to match my blog. (Hint: one is fiction, and the other is nonfiction.) Fiction: Armstrong: The Adventurous Journey of a Mouse to the Moon Nonfiction: Eight Days Gone
0 Comments
1. What’s the main idea? 2. Name one way ants and bees are the same. Name one way they’re different. 3. What’s your favorite ant fact? Defend your answer. Answers are at the end of this post. Last week I wrote about the research I’ve done on bees. This week I'm writing about ants. They’re fascinating! I googled and used multiple sources to confirm my facts, just like I did with bees. Many facts are the same. Here are the ones that shaped my ant story: * Their jaws are called mandibles. They’re compound tools, like our jaws and hands. Ants use them for biting, crushing, cutting, digging, fighting and hunting. * Their antennae help them sense the world around them, literally. They’re used to smell, touch, taste and communicate. They’re bent in the middle like our elbows. * Ants have both compound and simple eyes. * Ocelli, or simple eyes, come in sets of 3. They’re at the top of their head. They detect light levels (high or low) and polarization (the light source). Simple eyes are weak, and they don’t seem to be important. They're not even in my story. * Compound eyes have lots of tiny lenses stuck together. They make those big bug eyes. BTW, their eyes detect motion, but send them blurry images (see below). When I googled eyesight, my sources only mentioned compound eyes. * This week I discovered a new fact, neither ants nor bees have eyelids. They can’t wink or blink so I had to change a couple sentences to fit my new fact. *Another fact I got wrong is how ants breathe. They don’t have lungs. They have spiracles or breathing holes that let air in and out. Ants can't take a breathe. They open their spiracles and wait. Go figure! *This diagram shows a stinger. Stingers were never in my story. I googled them for this post. Only ants, like fire ants, have stingers. The rest bite. That’s probably why I never read or wrote about them. * Ants use their claws to grip, climb, hang and detect vibrations/sound. * All workers are female whether they work inside or outside the hive, just like bees. * Drones ants, like bees, have one job, to mate with a queen. They’re smaller than other workers. They have wings and live outside the colony. I found no evidence that drones return to the nest after they leave. My guess, they find food outside. * Ants, like bees, have queens. They have 1 job, to lay eggs. Minor ants take care of the queen and her new children, keeping them clean and fed. Major workers are soldiers and food foragers. As promised, here's how you look to a bee. Would you rather have your eyes, or an ant's? I like mine! I love these pictures. They’re worth 2000 words! The first shows how ants compare, size-wise. The queen is the big dog, I mean ant! She has wings when she leaves home for her maiden flight. When done, she’ll dig a new home, ditch the wings, and lay her first eggs. The queen will never, ever leave home again. If you follow the life cycle diagram, her eggs hatch and become soldiers (major ants) or workers (minor ant). A few eggs become young queens and kings (drones), and the cycle begins again. Home sweet home, for ants, whether it’s a bug-created habitat, or a human starter-home. My 2nd graders had an ant farm every spring for years. We started with all our sand at the bottom. I pushed a straw in 3 times to give them starter tunnels. Within a week the ants had passages like this, and, had brought sand to the top. No one works like an ant! When our ants arrived, we sent them to a refrigerator to fall asleep. That way I could put them into their new habitat and remain bite-free. A student once got confused and put them into the freezer. Poor ants! They didn’t wake up. Cold temperatures put ants to sleep. Freezing cold kills them. My kids promised every year to keep their hands off the farm. Why? A tiny bump is like an earthquake in the ant world. Tunnels could collapse and leave our ants in danger. My 2nd graders took this promise seriously…we never had a fatality. The best part of having an ant farm, is watching the ants. They carry food to their storage corner. They move sand from the bottom to the top. They even have graveyards. Really! Look at the black spots on the second picture. Those are dead ants, and this is their cemetery. Do you recognize the bugs above? They’re aphids, and they’re the most interesting thing I learned about ants. Ants farm aphids, really! Some new queens take aphid eggs to their new colony. They put them out to pasture on a juicy stem. The aphids drink the plant juice. Then when an ant’s hungry, she strokes the aphid with her antenna. The aphid poops, and the ant eats it. YUCK! The poop is called honeydew, and to an ant it’s like pure sugar. Would you believe ants even clip aphid wings so they won’t fly away? FYI…this post was easy to write. Why? I’ve been reading and writing about ants for over 6 years, but I’m still learning about them. A Little More Research…Ants, Please! 1. What’s the main idea?The main idea is to learn facts about ants from what research says.. 2. Name one what ants and bees are the same. Name one way they’re different.Same: Both ants and bees have queens who lay eggs. Different: Ants farm aphids. Bees don’t farm other bugs. 3. What’s your favorite ant fact? Defend your answer. Ants eat bug poop. YUCK! I can’t believe any creature would do that! 1. What’s the author’s purpose? 2. Name a fiction and nonfiction detail. 3. Name 2 places I found information. Answers are at the end of this post. I started a middle grade chapter book about ants 6 years ago. I took it to an SCBWI critique and discovered children’s fiction has to be factually correct. Who knew? I’d written a sentence, 1 sentence on the first page about an ant’s heart pounding. Bruce Hale, my reader, asked if ants had hearts. I said I don’t know, and he said, you will, if you want to be published. That’s when researching became part of my writing. Later bees came into the story so I did bee research. I googled and looked at different sources. I made sure multiple sources confirmed my facts. These are my need-to-know bee facts: * Their jaws are called mandibles. They use them to carry and construct things. They’re compound tools, like our jaws and hands. * Their antennae help them sense the world around them. * Bees have compound/multiple eyes. Drones (male bees) have the biggest eyes in the bee word. * Only females have stingers. Sorry drones, no stingers for you. * All workers are female whether they work inside or outside the hive. * Drones have one job, to mate with a queen. They don’t work in the hive. They don’t collect pollen, and they’re kicked out before winter. * Bees have queens. They have 1 job, to lay eggs. Worker bees take care of them, keeping them clean and fed. My story became a mixture of fiction/nonfiction. My ants ride on bees. Real ones don’t. I wanted 3 ants onboard. I googled and compared their size. The ants fit, at least in a story! I also wanted my ants to fly through the hive, They can’t. Why not? I called a bee keeper. He said the tunnels are only big enough to crawl through, so my ants had to crawl to meet the queen. I used the pictures below to help me imagine it, so I could write it. smaller than bees, so I rewrote part of a chapter to make my words fit the facts. Neither major nor minor ants would scrunch down to hike a tunnel. But my writing still wasn’t clear enough. My critique friends asked about the tunnels and the queen. You can’t write clearly if you can’t picture it. So I wrote questions for bee expert, Don Steinke. He's got his own Bee World. He tried to answer, but finally told me to come for a visit. It worked! At this month’s critique the ants and bees passed muster, finally! Here's what I learned about them: This is Don. He pulled out a frame from one of his hives. It’s man-made but similar to what bees create in the wild. A picture, better yet the real deal, is worth 1000 words. Thanks, Don! This is a close-up of the frame. The edge is wood. The rest is a plastic sheet with thousands of dimples on both sides. The workers add a little beeswax, and those dimples become the honeycomb. That’s where the queen lays her eggs She starts in the center of the cell frame and lays them in an organized pattern. Older queens lay less eggs and are less organized. Getting old isn’t easy, for bees or humans! A queen lays about 1500 eggs a day. They’re the size of a grain of rice. If the egg is fertile, it will become a female worker. If not, it’s a male, a drone. After 3 days the egg hatches into a larva. Worker bees feed it honey, royal jelly and plant liquids for 2 or 3 days, depending on what the larva will become. Then workers cap the cell in beeswax. Inside the larva spins a cocoon. It eats its way out in 7-14 days depending on what it is. New queens come out first, workers next, and drones last. The new adult goes to work immediately. Growing up isn’t fun! When you do research, you usually learn more than you need to know. For my writing I just needed to picture the hive, and how bees travel across it. Basically wild or domestic, the hives look a lot alike. They both have honeycombs, and the passageways are the same size. Inside either hive bees crawl across the frame, anywhere on the frame. It’s not like ants, who dig tunnels into the dirt. They only travel through those tunnels. Bees use the hole as their tunnel to go to the backside, or to another frame. (FYI, the hole is there to help the bee keeper extract honey.) In the wild bees leave holes for travel. Read on…Don told me more about bees. Who knows? I might need it in another chapter! care for the larva. It’s called travel stain. If you want light-colored honey, use a queen excluder. It keeps the queen out so she can’t lay eggs. A Little Research… Bees, Please! 1. What’s the author’s purpose? My author’s purpose was to inform how and why I research fictional details. 2. Name a fiction and nonfiction detail. Fiction example: Ants ride on bees. Nonfiction: Queen bees can lay 1500 eggs a day. 3. Name 2 places I found information. Google and Don Steinke’s Bee World Yes, I’m doing it again! Sort of, but this time it’s all about the NEW YEAR. For the last 11 days I have been taking an online class with author, blogger, 12 x 12 founder, Julie Hedlund. Every day I click on a link, listen to a video, and do homework. Now that I’m almost done, I’d thought I’d share some of my homework with you, and invent a version for you. Day 1 was an introduction, a quick taste of what Julie will be teaching. Sorry, no song this time, but you can google and play it yourself. When you write a paper, you start with an intro. You tell what you’re going to write about. In this class, you’re going to be putting ideas together, taking some away, to learn from 2017, and to make 2018 the best year ever. AKA you’ll be writing your own New Year’s resolution. You might even write more than 1. Tip, it’s fun, when you do it Julie’s way! This ends Day 1. See you tomorrow! For this paper, days 2-11 are the middle. It’s where I’ll tell you about those New Year’s Resolutions, Julie Hedlund style. Day 2 Surprise! Julie’s video was about surprises, and so was her homework: Writing 3-5 from this year. I had to think back to the unexpected, the good and the bad this year. 1. Cutting words can be easy with the right tool! Michelle Houts taught me how to use Ann Whitford Paul’s, Writing Picture Books. 2. My words are powerful…I had 2 authors look at me with fear because of my story plot. It was too strong for my audience. 3. Nothing more to edit? Shock! Usually I’m bummed with edits, but this time I was bummed without them. I felt like I’d failed, till another author gave me an idea to “weaken “ the plot for my audience. Now it’s your turn. How were you surprised in 2017? Day 3 Success! Julie talked today about recognizing and building from your own success Homework: write as many as you can. I had 28. I’ll share 4. 1. Wrote 1st new PB in 5 years. Cut over 700 words from it. 2. My website started with 25 visitors per week. Now I average about 500. My best week was 800. 3. I learned how to use Scrivener, which is a great word processing program for writers. 4. I submitted my safety story to 2 agents. That doubles my submissions up to 4. Now it’s your turn. What were your successes?. Write down as many as possible. It’s a good thing! Day 4 Disappointments! Julie said this was the hardest day, and she was right! She asked us to write 3-5 disappointments. Then go deeper by writing a judgement, your inner critic, on why you “failed.” You end on a hopeful note by writing the truth, why your disappointment was unachievable. I did 3. Here are 2. 1. Disappointment: My dog manuscript didn’t get picked up by an agent. Judgement: It’s not good enough. It will never be good enough. Truth: She saw potential in the manuscript and gave me ideas to push it. She thought I could handle the criticism and would use it. 2. Disappointment: I only submitted 3 manuscripts this year. Judgement: I’m too afraid. I’ll never believe in myself. I’ll always be watching the success of others. Truth: I knew my books weren’t ready yet, and I also know they’re getting closer. Now it’s your turn to write your disappointments, judgements and truth. Day 5 Learning! Today was easier! Julie defined learning as the positive knowledge you can take away from the things your heart knows to be true about your challenges, disappointments, and failures. Here are 2. 1. Learning from dog manuscript: If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. The agent didn’t say delete the manuscript. She gave me ways to improve it. I already have, then had it looked at, and re-edited from feedback. It’s going out this week. May the force be with it! 2. Learning from submissions: I’m finding my community, my tribe, my support group. They’ve helped me with manuscripts. They’ve cheered my baby steps forward. Your turn...write what you've learned from those challenges, disappointments, and failures. Day 6 Next Step, Building from Success, Erasing Disappointment. 3 parts today. Let's do one at a time. STEP #1: Look at yesterday’s learning. What’s your next step towards your goal? Here are 2. STEP 2: Look at your successes. Pick your favorites to build onto. I did 7, but I’m showing you 3. STEP 3: Delete, shrink, or burn your Disappointments and Judgements. Truth: The agent saw potential in the manuscript and gave me ideas to push it. She thought I could handle the criticism and would use it. Learning: If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. The agent didn’t say delete the manuscript. She gave me ways to improve it. I already have, then had it looked at, and re-edited from feedback. It’s going out this week. May the force be with it! Next step: Keep editing and critiquing Dog story till it’s ready. Now it's your turn! Day 7 Gratitude! Julie said this was her favorite day of the whole 12 days because it involves the most sustaining element of all…gratitude. I had a list of 20. Here are 3. 1. For the development of my blog, for those who helped me to build it, and for those who read it. 2. For SCBWI where I found friends and mentors. 3. For the gifts God gave me, the bat, the ability to write, to focus and persevere, to take suggestion. How about you? What are you grateful for? Day 8 Book Cover! Julie suggested taking the pages from this class in order and turning them into a book. I did my work on computer pages so I turned this project into this poster. Please do what fits you! Here’s how I’ll use word power Keep us going: Scrivener, My Blog, My Reads Revise and submit us: Ant, Safety, and Dog stories Write something new: Bat, Duck, and Mary/Martha Try something new: 12x12, Writing with the Stars, Story Storm Thank you: To Julie Hedlund And her 12 Days of Christmas Day 9 Fun! After working hard for 8 days, Julie did a video day featuring Rockie Hedlund’s rules for writing. Rockie is the family dog. I can’t share her video, but I can do something similar. This is a border terrier who looks like my Leia. I matched her favorite things to rules for writing. Enjoy! 1. She always laid at the top of the stairs. Rule: Be observant. You won’t miss a thing. 2. She also loved to sit/lay on my feet. Rule: Stay close to those you love. 3. She loved clothes on the floor. They were perfect to lay on. Rule: Sometimes jobs like laundry can wait. 4. Leia loved walks and would go crazy if she heard our code words. We started with: Time for a walk. Then changed to WALK before our last try, the “W” word. Rule: Always be ready to learn. 5. She’d pull my kids down the street, choking all the way, huge doggy smile on her face. Rule: Don’t forget to have fun! Day 10 Pause! Julie took today to pause, reflect, and affirm. I’ve been doing that all week with this class. Today’s assignment was to come up with a word or phrase of affirmation. Here’s mine: Day 11 Writing Prompt! No video! Julie sent writing prompts today. If you want to be a writer, improve as a writer, then you need to write! So I did! Prompt: It's 1504 in Florence, Italy. You get lost and stumble upon Leonardo da Vinci painting the Mona Lisa. What happens next? Here are 2 scenes I played around with, just for fun! I stumbled through the door of the time machine. It worked! I was in an alley, in 16th century Florence, Italy. I looked down at my clothes. They fit the time period. I strolled out of the alleyway and down the street. My research said this neighborhood where I’d find Leonardo da Vinci’s studio. I followed my map to the studio, opened the door, and tiptoed inside. Leonardo called, “Sit, watch, and wait.” He continued painting. A lady sat like a statue. I knew her face, but not her name. I watched Leonardo paint. I wished I could paint like Leonardo. ***skip ahead to art lesson**** After dinner, I sat down beside Leonardo. He said, “Draw.” “I can’t.” Leonardo smiled. “Try, for me.” I did, a stick figure. Leonardo said, “That’s how all young artists begin, with lines, with sticks. Watch me.” Research how by drawing lines, check with an art teacher Day 12 Conclusion! Time for a finale. In the intro, I gave you the main idea. In the middle, I gave you the details. It’s time for a conclusion, to sum up the post and Julie’s final lesson. First thank you for taking your time to read this post. I hope it helped you set the stage for the New Year. Congratulations! You looked back at 2017, and you’re armed with the truth. You know what you learned, and best of all, you set up steps to take towards your goal. Ready, set, go! Julie’s final piece of advice is from Jane Yolen’s Take Joy. Basically, it’s that simple, take time to take joy. Enjoy the view. Stop and smell the roses. All synonyms, all clichés, and all true. Enjoy your journey through 2018! Here’s to the voyage! |
AuthorWhen I write, I can only have one voice in my head, mine. A little noise is fine. But too much, or worse yet, WORDS, and I must change rooms or pull out headphones. Then I can write on! Categories
All
|