Dear Friends,

Last month we gave our first WinkWorld awards to Jennifer Wolfe and Marge Knox, who both suggested the name for our electronic newsletter. This month Marge and Jennifer have each made another contribution to WinkWorld, which we appreciate.

Marge writes about her present experiences with music in the public schools, using Yetta Goodman's concept of Kidwatching and Kathy Short's ideas about the Inquiry Process. Marge combines kidwatching and the inquiry process so that students, not only take control of their own learning, but also go beyond Marge's planned pedagogical processes.

Jennifer shares her perspectives on a particular discipline program. In my own public school teaching career, I had experiences with many different discipline programs. I was a terrible failure with all of the programs, although I never felt that I had discipline problems. It took me years to recognize and be courageous enough to say that the only thing that ever worked for me was a crazy passion for learning and a love/respect for the students' and their own learning. I have also learned that just because discipline programs did not work for me, they can have value for others. Jennifer provides a great example of this and has helped me to do rethinking.

You may remember that last month we also shared some blackline masters, reflections on Mem Fox and Jim Trelease, and more Prairie Pedagogy (a.k.a., Joan real world ranch stories). Incidentally, until I connect these prairie stories to pedagogy, we should probably call them, Prairie Prattle. The previous newsletters are archived on JoanWink.com.

This month Dawn will add a critical perspective on a new section in the fifth edition of The Read-Aloud Handbook by Trelease.

As I have been thinking about students writing and publishing their own books in classrooms in preparation for CRA (CA Reading Association) in November in Sacramento, I am sharing four separate files on authentic writing in the classroom, or Big Books.

• Methods and Anti-Methods
• Theoretical Framework for Big Books
• One Way to Make Big Books in Class
• One Way to Bind Big Books in Class.

We also want to share a book review, of Jim Cummins' update of Negotiating Identities. This review was written collectively by the graduate students in EDML 5400, Theory of Multilingual Education, during the spring semester 2002. Carrie Diehl, a teacher in Turlock, was the marvelous lead writer for the group.