April | 2014 | Reflections on the Teche

Archive for April, 2014

Elocution

Posted in Poetry, Teaching, Writing, tagged elocution, Kenn Nesbitt, soundcloud on April 7, 2014| 5 Comments »

E is for Elocution. My younger students are preparing for elocution, memorizing and reciting a poem of choice. They tend to select funny poems, and one of the funniest kid poets is Kenn Nesbitt. Erin picked out “I Think I’m Related to Big Foot” and memorized it quickly. I recorded her little 2nd grade voice reciting the poem. I love the giggles at the end. She can’t keep from laughing. She also has very large dimples that make her even more adorable.

I think I’m related to Bigfoot,
though nothing has ever been proved.
I sort of suspect he’s a cousin,
just seven or eight times removed.

Read the rest of the poem here.

If you use Safari as a browser, you may not be able to hear the Soundcloud. Linda Baie found the solution here: http://help.soundcloud.com/customer/portal/articles/1464535-why-can-t-i-hear-tracks-using-safari-
Thanks, Linda.

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DigiLit Diamante

Posted in Digital Learning, Poetry, Teaching, Writing, tagged diamante poems, Interactive, Pic Stitch, Read Write Think on April 6, 2014| 10 Comments »

Please use this button on your site for DigiLit Sunday posts

This beautiful wisteria vine grows outside my bedroom window. I think I write a poem about it every year. Today for DigiLit Sunday, I am posting a collage made with Pic Stitch. One of my favorite teacher sites is Read, Write, Think. Supported by two amazing organizations, International Reading Association and National Council for Teachers of English, this site offers a wealth of literacy-based lesson plans. I also love the interactive applications available. I made a diamante poem on a Read, Write, Think Interactive. For students, the app works well because it prompts them for each word. The form for a diamante creates a diamond shape with 7 lines:

Title
Two adjectives
Three -ing words
A phrase that connects title to ending word (antonym or synonym)
Three -ing words
Two adjectives
Ending noun, antonym or synonym

Link up your Digital Literacy post with Mr. Linky.

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Celebration and Centos

Posted in Celebration Saturday, Poetry, Teaching, Writing, tagged book spine cento poems on April 5, 2014| 11 Comments »

Happy Celebration Saturday. Ruth Ayres is gathering celebration posts over at her blog, Discover. Play. Build.

First I want to shout out and celebrate fellow poet-blogger, Laura Shovan. For her birthday month, Laura posted Pantone colors as writing prompts. As a prize for my participation, she sent me a package of prompts, colors and postcards. What a great gift! Thanks, Laura.

Sometimes you try a poetry activity and think it didn’t go so well, but then the kids ask for it again. So when C came up, my students asked to do Book Spine Centos. I said, “OK, but you have to spend some time and try to make them have a theme, not just see who can stack up the most books.” Making a well composed cento poem is harder than it looks.

So with a little collaboration and an ever-growing classroom library, my students went to work. While some were perusing the shelves, Vannisa quietly went to the side and lifted the title, “Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry,” and wrote a couplet poem.

by Margaret Simon
A thousand mornings
view from the window seat
blackbird singing
state of wonder

By Nigel
Once upon a marigold,
The Twits
wake up missing
side by side.

By Kendall
Roll of thunder, hear my cry
day by day.
A jar of dreams
choosing up sides
worth
things not seen–
eye of the storm.

If you like this idea, step on over to 100 Scope Notes with Travis Jonker and view his 2014 gallery.

Today, I celebrate a week of poetry writing and reading in my classroom. Poetry makes everything better, even storms.

The thunder is very loud,
rain falls from the cloud.

Perfect nonsense is what I say,
I like this rainy thundering day

Roll of thunder, hear my cry,
don’t be so loud, I hear you nearby.

Give me back the blue sky,
or else everyone will be on standby.

The lightning flashes bright,
making the sky turn black and white.

The thunder stops as my teacher reads the poem,
the peacefulness makes me feel at home.

Vannisa, age 10, all rights reserved

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C is for Collaboration

Posted in Poetry Friday, Teaching, Writing, tagged couplet, haiku, Kevin Hodgson, line lifting, Michelle Haseltine, notegraphy on April 4, 2014| 12 Comments »

Poetry Friday Round-up is at The Poem Farm.

Some days don’t go as planned. As you know, I am trying to do a poem a day using ABCs of styles, forms, and techniques. For Day 3, letter C, we got so wrapped up in book talks that we had little time left for writing.

As we reviewed the results of Round 4 on MMPoetry, we found the words for the final round. Incontinent, kerfuffle, confabulation, and defenestrate. After discussion, collaboration led to a haiku using the word defenestration. I showed my students this new app I learned about from Kevin Hodgson and Michelle Haseltine, Notegraphy. It works well for a collaborative haiku.

The line lifter lurked on my students’ blogs and left some cool response poems. The kids were so excited that their poems had been hacked! Thanks, Kevin.

Me –
the mold on the wall,
sticks to you like thoughts in your head
that you can’t ever shake loose
or clean with a swipe
or maybe I am more like a poem
that one shares on the Web
which then whispers melodies of meaning in your ear
all day.

– Mr. Hodgson
Sixth Grade Teacher
Norris Elementary School
aka, the line lifter
🙂

Kaylie stopped by our class blog and saw no poems using the letter C. That didn’t stop her from contributing. She wrote a beautiful couplet about pelicans.

The pelican flies out towards dawn
Past the orange sunrise and so on

They travel in pairs across the sky
When the bayou has gone bone dry

They long for the feel of the wet on their feathers
The bayou is where their hearts are tethered

The pelican flies out towards dawn
Past the orange sunrise… on and on and on…
–Kaylie, all rights reserved

Please click on over to Caroline Starr Rose’s blog where I am the guest writer. My post is more about anaphora.

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Writing Bad Poetry like Billy Collins

Posted in Poetry Friday, Teaching, Writing, tagged ABCs of poetry, bad poetry, Billy Collins on April 3, 2014| 5 Comments »

I am convinced that writing poetry is a gift from God. The magical words that float around my classroom amaze me.

I am also the mellifluous sound of a pencil writing on paper.
–Kendall

I know the title is confusing. Bad poetry? From Billy Collins? If you do not know the poem Litany by Billy Collins, then you must go to these sites and read or listen to it. Bet you can’t keep a straight face. In print on Poem Hunter.

Recited by a 3 year old on YouTube:

And…Billy Collins himself:

I explained to my students that Billy Collin’s poem was so bad it was good. They got that. Having primed them with this poem, I let them loose to borrow the structure, think outside the box, and create wildly creative metaphors. I was amazed by the results and would love to share them all. You can read them on our class blog: Slice of Life Challenge at kidblog.org.
The lurking line lifter struck in the wee hours of the morning, so read the comments, too.

I am excited about the poem I caught on this fishing trip. I was thinking about how writing poems together connects us.

Our Ship

We are all on this ship together
whether or not it sails.
We are side by side like the freckles on your mother’s face.
We are closer than the love bugs on the windshield.
You, and I, and he, and she.
We are not like the blown away balloons
at the 3 year old’s birthday party.
We are not the shavings of wood mulching the flower bed.
No, we are this way, that way,
you know what I mean,
intertwined like the vines of wisteria,
joined and connected, tumbling and reaching.
Give me your hand.
I will give you mine.
Let’s go on this voyage together.

–Margaret Simon, all rights reserved.

Vannisa wins the prize of being published on this blog with her poem. She just looked around the classroom and found metaphors galore.

Everything in the Classroom

You can be the air that comes through the vent
You can be the memory I regret
You can be the board I write messages to
You can be the painting that just sits
You can be the pencil sharpener, only useful when needed

As for I,
I could be the mechanical pencil that doesn’t need you
I could be the clip that makes you sit
I could be the eraser that deletes your notes
I could be the person who creates you, the memory I regret
I could be the thermostat, who shuts you down

–Vannisa, all rights reserved

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April ABCs

Posted in Poetry, Teaching, Writing, tagged anaphora, bullying, gifted classroom on April 2, 2014| 8 Comments »

It’s National Poetry Month and I am posting poems using forms, styles, and tools in alphabetical order. (For as long as it works. I may take some poetic license for this.) Jama has graciously gathered all the wonderful poetry blogs at her site, Jama’s Alphabet Soup.

One of my students named this month of writing “April ABCs.”

A is for anaphora. Have you heard of this before? I love it when my gifted kids say “I’ve never heard of that before.” A true teachable moment.

I have written a blog post for Caroline Starr Rose that speaks more about this writing technique, so stay tuned for the publication date for that post.

Anaphora is the repetition of a word or group of words at the beginning of successive phrases. Politicians use it for emphasis. “I Have a Dream” being the most famous. Poets use it to create memorable images and details. When writing with my students, I realized that anaphora can lead to powerful metaphor. If I teach this technique again, I think I would ask the students to include all the senses as well.

Henri-Francois Riesener

I am a Mother

I am the small gold locket you wear on your neck.
I am the scented perfume on your skin.
I am the taste of sweet milk on your tongue.
I am the curl of hair you place behind your ear.
I am the voice that sings a soft lullaby.
I am the warm tender finger wiping away a tear.
I am the earth under your feet, the heart that beats
in time with yours, reminding you each day
you are loved.
–Margaret Simon, all rights reserved

Poetry writing has a way of getting to the core. When the quiet student reads aloud, we realize he’s not only a poet inside, but a real thinking feeling human being. I’m afraid gifted kids, especially the boys, often become a subject of bullying. Sadly, I think K had experienced bullying, and he expressed it in his poem.

This is the quiet kid sitting in the corner.
This is the annoying kid sitting on the porch.
This is the little kid sitting on the lonely swing sets.
This is the lonely kid sitting at the table with no friends.
This is the unnoticeable kid sitting while being bullied.
This is the “weird” kid, a victim with memories and scars

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National Poetry Month

Posted in Poetry, Slice of Life, Teaching, Writing, tagged Amy Vanderwater, poetry about poetry on April 1, 2014| 8 Comments »

Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.

Rather convenient that the last day of the Slice of Life Challenge month fell on a Monday, so the regular Tuesday Slice of Life followed. No rest for the weary. Let’s just keep up the momentum. Why stop now?

That’s what I said to my students as they wrote their final slices. Let’s keep this going. So my plans for the month of April is to challenge my students to write a poem a day. Now April is a busy month. Next week we have state testing all week. The last week of April is our Easter/Spring break. I hope you will visit occasionally on our kidblog to read their poems and comment.

National Poetry Month 2014 is exciting and busy! I will try to post a poem a day using different forms. I have a few guest posts coming up; one for Caroline Starr Rose about writing poems using anaphora, and another one about source poems for Laura Shovan. I will link up on the days that these are posted. I am also participating in Irene Latham’s Progressive Poem (links on the sidebar.)

Flickr by Maureen

Let’s begin with a poem about poetry. This poem was prompted by a quote from Amy Vanderwater in an interview posted on Jone MacCullough’s site: Check it out.

“usually I just let a poem find the voice it wants to find.”

Let a poem find the voice it wants to find.

Real things can happen there,
even imaginary ones.
Dreams…yes,
dreams, too.

Poems hide in unexpected places,
their voices buried in the sand.
Grab your shovel.
Let’s dig them out.

Take me with you on the walk with your new poem.
Let’s build a castle together.
Whisper softly the sound of the ocean waves.

I’ll know when I hear your special voice.
Words will find me watching.
Words will find the hearts they need to find.

–Margaret Simon, all rights reserved.