Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.
A selfie with my friend Sarah as we eat beignets at Festival Acadiens.
This was a weekend to embrace the culture of South Louisiana, along with the crazy heat. I’m not sure if we set records, but the temperatures were blazing while my husband and I introduced friends from Houston to the music and food of our home town. Two festivals complete with Cajun and Zydeco music, gumbo, beignets, and shrimp po-boys. We danced (and ate) all weekend. Our favorite bands are BeauSoleil avec Michael Doucet and Geno Delafose and the French Rockin Boogie. Family was part of the fun, two daughters, a sister-in-law, mother-in-law, and a niece.
I have been going to these festivals for years, but dancing has only been part of them for the last three and a half. Dancing makes all the difference. I feel like I am part of the music, not just a by-stander listener. I am sore and tired, but the kind of sore and tired when you have done something vigorous, life-giving, like hiking or completing a marathon. The music is still playing in my mind.
Maggie, Katherine, and niece Claire pose at the Gumbo Cookoff.
I made a video about dancing this weekend. My husband is the handsome dancer. Be warned: there is one clip where the music comes on suddenly loud.
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I am entertaining guests this weekend. I may post later. I do want to share that I had a special visitor to my blog on Friday, J. Patrick Lewis, 2012-2013 Children’s Poet Laureate. He watched the Emaze presentation I made about him and the zeno poems my students and I wrote. This was his email.
Dear Margaret,
A swashbuckler of a bow to you for featuring the zeno on your blog and for encouraging your students to try their hand at it. I’m honored and humbled, and I must say, extremely impressed by their efforts. Please extend to them my warm wishes for a blootitootiful school year.
As one of my students called out,”You love to connect us with authors.” They know me well, and they know that when I tell them we are going to learn a new poetry form, writing will happen, they will be supported, and it will be challenging. Last Friday, Michelle Heindenrich Barnes featured J. Patrick Lewis on her site. Pat put forth a challenge with a new form that he created called a zeno. The zeno is based on the hailstone sequence. This is the kind of math I enjoy. Math poetry: repeated syllable counts. My students were fascinated. They couldn’t wait to share with their math teachers. Matthew said, “I think I can use this in a magic trick.”
I have been playing with Emaze for presentations. I was so taken with the poems my students created in the morning group that I made an Emaze to teach my afternoon group. Later, I added some of their poems to the presentation. I encourage you to try this with your students. If you want to use the Emaze presentation, let me know.
Click the link below to go directly to the presentation.
Click here to read more #spiritualjourney posts. Thanks Holly for hosting this roundup!
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
–W.B. Yeats
We teachers have dreams laid at our feet. We should be careful. We need to remember to step with a light foot, like a feather brushing by, a slight wind to give direction, an uplifting to the wings of our tiny birds.
Ann Voskamp
Hope holds us together.
Hope is the thing, the one with feathers,
the thing we all wish for
in the darkest night of despair
when our hearts are breaking.
Hope holds on
to the thin line of your mouth when you smile,
to the circles under your eyes,
the sparkle of tears on your cheek; Hope paints a rainbow there.
Plant hope in the hole in your heart.
Open to the sound of His song–
the hoot of the owl, the cry of the hawk.
His voice carries
across wild fields
over storm clouds
into your hands.
Get ready.
Open your palms when you pray.
–Margaret Simon, all rights reserved.
Original photo (iPhonography) by Margaret Simon taken at Sugar Mill Pond, Youngsville, LA.
Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.
As students become writers, they learn that it can be hard work. In my classes, we have been discussing what makes a good blog post. What are the qualities of good writing? During one of these discussions, Matthew was playing with paperclips, making a paperclip chain. He then started talking about how the chain related to staying on topic in a Slice of Life story. I stopped him and said, “Could I video you saying that?” Here he is:
Kylon has been posting chapters each week of his story, “Something in the Mist.” He posted it over the summer, but since few students were reading, I encouraged him to post once school started. He told me that when he posts new chapters, he revises. He also told me that he printed the whole story out and found that it needed a lot of editing. My response was a laugh because, if you write at all, you know this. I did not prompt Kylon to write about writing, but I am so glad he did. His advice is wise and comes from hard work.
Let me start by saying, “It was pretty hard to write Something in the Mist.” I started writing in March, and finished on one of the last days of school. One of the hardest things about writing it was writing the dates and times. I had to go to the last chapter, calculate about how much time since the beginning of the last chapter, and put it down at the beginning of the new chapter. I also have to think about what would be going on at that time. I wouldn’t be eating lunch at 3:45 PM. I wouldn’t be at home at noon on a weekday. I tried to make the setting as realistic as possible. (SPOILER: When the settings are constantly changing towards the end of the story, it’s really hard to write.)
Another hard thing about writing: making sense. Your character can’t be getting out of bed, and 20 seconds later, he’s running from the police with a weapon and a thousand dollars in his pocket. I know it’s a bit of exaggeration, but it’s true. When I started recording the explosions earlier in the story, my iPod had to be in the car, still recording, after the action.
Next, you don’t want your reader to be falling asleep. You need to keep the action, but not too much action. Example: don’t blow up a building, get hit by a car, run from the police, and steal a car in one chapter. That’s TOO much action.
Also, add extra detail. Don’t say, ‘The car blew up and I covered my head.’ Instead, say, ‘I dived for cover just as the car erupted into a violent fireball. Glass and metal rained down, and I put my hands over my head.’ That’s cool.
One more thing: Writing a long story. Something in the Mist has 6,713 words. That’s a long story!
–Kylon (aka Twinfish)
To read Something in the Mist, click here.
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This week we are nearing the end of the nine weeks grading period. My students are working on their book talks. I require one each quarter. I also require some form of technology. I am pleased that I have discovered new presentation apps to give them multiple choices in technology. The choices range from Powerpoint, Emaze, Prezi, and Animoto. I am excited about the variety of presentations that will be done. These will not only inspire my students to read different books, but they will also want to try different digital platforms.
Today I am posting an example of Prezi, Animoto, and Emaze.
Having choices creates a richer experience in my classroom and allows each student to explore and be themselves. As with most digital media, I simply allow the students to access them. They learn how to use them very quickly with little help from me. The only trouble we had this week was with slow computers. Not all of our computers are new. What other presentation media have you used?
Please link up your digital literacy posts with Mr. Linky.
Ruth Ayres invites us the celebrate each week. Click over to her site Discover. Play. Build. to read more celebrations.
October bulletin board
Have you ever played Boo with your school or neighborhood? It’s become a thing at our school every year, but as an itinerate teacher, I sometimes get left out. Not this year. We have an awesome secretary who wants everyone to be included, so this year she is organized. On only the third day of October, I was Booed! I got a bucket of fun things: a Halloween plastic cup with a straw, a pair of Jack-O-Lantern socks, some snacks, candy for the kids, and decorations for my bulletin board. (Notice the plastic spiders in the web.) It made my Friday happy. This weekend I will stop at the store to make my own basket of goodies for some secret teacher. Games like these boost morale and make a school a fun community.
While I was digging in the cabinet for fall decorations, I found a poem I wrote a few years ago. It expresses well my feelings of celebration today, with cooler air, tall sugarcane, leaves falling, and sastumas soon to ripen. I do love this time of year.
October
On my morning walk,
sun reflects on the path.
Leaves crackle as I step.
Scent of a far off fire–
a sure sign of fall.
Sugarcane sways,
Satsumas ripen,
Cypress needles litter the lawn.
Rain showers blow in and blow out,
softening and cooling the air.
I’m falling in love with October.
I open my doors to the chilly wind,
welcome the sound of scavenging squirrels,
and celebrate this new season.
Join Jama for Poetry Friday at Jama’s Alphabet Soup.
This week my students and I were wondering about Aerodynamics. I love framing my weeks with so many wonders at Wonderopolis. We learned about jet streams and lift. We watched some cool time-lapsed videos.
Since we were wondering and wandering around in the clouds, I found some cloud poems to share. From The Poetry Friday Anthology for Middle School, I read Racing the Clouds by Jacqueline Jules (p. 45) and Biking Along White Rim Road by Irene Latham (p. 109). From The Poetry Friday Anthology For Science, I read Clouds by Kate Coombs (p. 85) and Tropical Rain Forest Sky Ponds by Margarita Engle. (On a side note, I am thrilled that my students are learning the names of wonderful Poetry Friday poets.)
My students noticed metaphors, personification, onomatopoeia, rhyming, and more. The Poetry Friday anthologies suggested the website Clouds Appreciation Society. (Is there a website for everything?) I pulled up a cloud picture on the board to inspire writing. Even though some of my young students go back to the acrostic form, their writing was richer, emoting more sense of tone, and embedded with metaphor. Models, models, models, teachers. They work!
Coming together
Like a school
Of fish
Under the big blue sky
Disaster, waiting to strike
Couldn’t be better
Laying under the sun
Once it was peaceful, no clouds
Underneath, we are the unsuspecting victims, of the next
Deadly hurricane
–Tobie
(To leave comments for this poet, go to his post.)
In Vannisa’s poem, you will see words and phrases borrowed from the poems we read, mixed together with her words to create a new poem.
Over Afganistan
sunlight is hidden,
for it is somewhat forbidden.
Because this is the clouds,
the round, puffy, white clouds.
The cloud of wish,
the cloud that is as flat as a dish.
They are all lakes in the sky.
Whether it is a flat, small pond,
or a fat navy ocean,
there are no
empty spaces.
–Vannisa (To leave comments for this poet, go to this post.)
Dear Emily was moved to make her poem into an Animoto video. Prepare for tears. Her poem is dedicated to Amy Ludwig VanDerwater. Amy knows why.
Click here to read more #spiritualjourney posts. Thanks Holly for hosting this roundup!
Holly invites us to reflect on our spiritual journey each week. Today’s theme is Trust.
Maya, weaver of illusions,
how is it we trust the web, the nest,
the roof over our heads, we trust the stars
our guardians who gave us our alphabet?
We trust the turtle’s shell because
it, too, says house and how can we read
the footprints of birds on shoreline sand,
& October twigs that fall to the ground
in patterns that match the shell & stars?
Trust is essential to living in this world. Embedded in the word trust is the word truth. One must be true to himself before he can be true to others. My One Little Word for 2014 is Open. Being Open is all about trust. Trusting my heart to lead me. Letting go and letting God. Giving over my need to control.
Prayer is at the center of trust. If I put my trust in God, I speak that trust in my prayer. “Not my will, but yours be done.” There is power in giving trust in prayer. I believe that power can influence the universe, move mountains, and heal.
Judith Vollmer’s poem speaks of trust in nature, the goodness of things such as house spiders. Her poem concludes with these lines: “I feel less and less like
a single self, more like
a weaver, myself, spelling out
formulae from what’s given
and from words.”
As I grow older, I feel less like a single self. I feel more a part of the family of things. I open myself to experience the world around me, and worry less about what it has to do with me. A few weeks ago, I stood by and watched a young student of mine bury her mother. I watched as she cringed at the sound of the casket being pushed into the mausoleum. This was not about me. I trusted God that I needed to be there. In the days that have followed, I realize that I had to share that experience with my student so that she would know that I know. She has complete trust in me. Sometimes trust is about giving up ourselves. Trust is about being present.
Margaret Simon lives on the Bayou Teche in New Iberia, Louisiana. She teaches gifted elementary students, writes poetry and children's books. Welcome to a space of peace, poetry, and personal reflection. Walk in kindness.
Reflections on the Teche 