Join the Poetry Friday Round-up.
My favorite librarian, Jone, has the round up today at Check it Out. Go check it out!
Inspired by a post from Linda Baie (who blogs at Teacher Dance) about using Eve Merriam’s poem Thumbprint at the beginning of the school year, I designed this week’s Wonder around fingerprints. We read this article on Wonderopolis. I asked students to select four vocabulary words from the Wonder Words. Then we watched this Prezi about annotating Eve Merriam’s Thumbprint. Then using the chosen words, we wrote our own poems. I also passes around an ink pad so my students could place their thumbprint on the journal page. I taught this lesson twice during the day to two groups of students, so I had the added advantage of writing two poems. Here’s mine.
Fingerprint
I own
a God-given design,
uniquely mine,
a painting of swirls
and whorls
imprinting me
on this page.
I own
an invisible touch,
a latent path
left on a note
from me to you,
this fingerkiss.–Margaret Simon, all rights reserved
Reflections on the Teche 
This poem helps me remember that learning about fingerprints is one of those charmed moments in childhood. Everyone’s prints are unique. Snowflakes I learned about first, then the prints on our hands. Magic!
What a great way to start this year. Your students must have so much fun adding their thumbprints to their poems.
Love that you did this, Margaret. It’s a beautifully personal way to start the year! I love that you used the word ‘latent’-somehow, it touched me! Thanks for my link, too.
This is wonderful, Margaret – what a thoughtful way to begin a school year of writing and thinking.
Tara,
Thanks for all the Twitter love. My students are posting their poems today on our kidblog. http://kidblog.org/sliceoflifechallenge/
Oh, a fingerkiss! Wonderful poem and start-the-year-off-right lesson. Bet the kids loved leaving their thumbprints.
[…] Margaret shares a lesson on fingerprints and her own original fingerprint poem inspired by Eve Merriam. […]
Fingerkiss… LOVE!
Fabulous poem, Margaret! “Fingerkiss”, to echo Michelle, LOVE! Happy New School Year!
What a fabulous ending, Margaret. It caught me completely by surprise.
“Fingerkiss” is a touch of brilliance. I love it. 🙂
Yup, me, too–lovin’ the “fingerkiss!” (Also nabbing this idea for next year’s beginning of the year writing!!)
[…] « Thumbprint […]