Exploring Place Through Writing
Kim Piddington
Wilson’s Creek 5/6 School
kpiddington@spsmail.org
Lesson appropriate for Grades 4-12

Rational:
"When we write about people and places that we cherish, we are more apt to find an honest voice because we are more likely to choose words, sentences, and structure more carefully." (Rural Voices p.63)

I explained to the students that we were going to examine places that were important to them, with the end goal being to write a Where I’m From poem. I wanted to start with something the children were familiar with, so I borrowed the first part of this lesson, Mapmaking, from Chapter Two of Writing Life Stories by Bill Roorbach. I gave the students a blank piece of paper and the following instructions:

Please make a map of a neighborhood you have lived in.
Include as much detail as you can. (Number of houses on the street, good climbing trees, street lights, places for forts, etc.)
Who lives where? (Your friends, the "weird" people, someone who gives out great Halloween candy, someone who has awesome flower beds or a perfect lawn, the old lady you rake leaves for, the guy who owns a scary dog, etc.)
Where are the secrete places?
Where are the off limits places?
Where have good things happened?
Where have you gotten in trouble?

We worked on our maps for approximately 20 minutes the first day, and another 20 minutes the following day. Anyone who was not done at that point was instructed to finish it for homework. The next day we shared our maps in small groups, then pair shared a verbal story from our neighborhood with two different partners.
Example of student maps.
Lesson Extension: My end goal was a poem, however this would be a perfect place to do a narrative or memoir piece.

The next part of this lesson came from a lesson by Mimi Dyer, " Take Two: Reading Community Photos" in Writing Our Communities. The purpose of this portion of the lesson is for students to develop a sense of the community beyond their backyard.
I took photos of the local area. I had two prints made of each photo. I then distributed the pairs of photos to students who were not physically proximate to each other. Next, I gave each student a blank piece of paper and asked them to fold it to create four squares. We put one question in each square:
1. What do you see?
2. What don’t you see? (What is missing?)
3. What questions do you have about this place?
4. Have you ever been to this place or one like it? Write a short paragraph about the experience.
After modeling what I expected using the Silver Dollar City photo on the Elmo, I gave the students approximately 15 minutes to examine their photo and write. Participants then found the student with the same photo and shared their writing. Afterwards, I put up the photos one at a time and we discussed the places, experiences, and questions we had about them. ( This took quite a bit of time with 5th graders, as they all had a comment to make about every photo!)
Examples of student work.
Photos used.
Lesson Extension: Again, I was pressing forward to get to the poem, however this would be a great place to write a short summary paragraph (Hook, topic sentence, supporting details, concluding sentence) about their favorite place or the place they’d like most to visit.

We were now ready to do the pre-writing for our poem. On the first day, I passed out a graphic organizer with the following eight sections: People, Places, Food, TV shows/Music/Movies/Books, Events (Example: getting braces, first day of school, vacation to Hawaii) Fooling Around/Hobbies, Bad Stuff (Example: broken bones, death of a person or pet, getting lost) and Other (Example: favorite sayings, pets, etc.) I gave each child a copy of a Where I’m From poem, and as a class, we went through it line by line, deciding which section each event in the example poem would go into.
The next day, I put up eight large pieces of poster paper; each labeled with one of the categories from the graphic organizers. In groups of four, the children rotated from poster to poster adding ideas. (I allowed two minutes per poster.) These stayed up around the room for those students who might have trouble getting started. The students were then given 30 minutes to work on their graphic organizer. I encouraged students to take the graphic organizer home that evening in order to discuss with their parents any categories they may be having difficulty with .
On the third day, I provided children with a template for the poem, but told them they could tweak it (or ignore it completely) as needed. We also went over the rubric. Over the next several days they write rough drafts, met with me, peer edited, revised, wrote final copies and shared their poems with their writing groups.
Graphic Organizer
Here's the original poem by George Ella Lyons.
Here's a template to create your own "Where I'm From" poem.
Rubric
Example of student work