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Archive for April, 2016

NPM2016

Also inspired by Amy, quick watercolor in the sketchbook.

Also inspired by Amy, quick watercolor in the sketchbook.

The kidlitoshpere is wildly growing with poems. Amy Ludwig VanDerwater is writing daily to wonders from Wonderopolis. I found a poem in her post, How Sweet is Honeysuckle?

The line “Words live on like echoes” came from Barry Lane’s song “Sammy Miller” from Force Field for Good.

I wrote two poems today,
one from an open window with honeysuckle
and rhyme, but this time the poem
felt not ready to be shared.

Words live on like echoes…

I need to let a poem sit
read  words over and over
Trust the feeling,
Move on.

Words live on like echoes…

Poems make me happy.
Poems make me sing.
I pretend to be a mother hummingbird.
I like the sounds of words.

Words live on like echoes…

Poems make me fall in love
with hummingbirds. I want to
plant a garden of milkweed,
trumpet honeysuckle,
& love poems
for you.

Words live on like echoes.

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Please use this button on your site for DigiLit Sunday posts

Please use this button on your site for DigiLit Sunday posts

 

For National Poetry Month, I am not only writing a poem a day myself, but I am also asking my students to do the same.  Something I have noticed this week as they go from the written form to the typed form, my students are thinking about line breaks.  They are making their poems look like poems on the page.

Attention to form is made easier by digital media.  When they type into a blog post, they can press shift enter to make the lines fall directly below each other.  To create stanzas, they simply press enter.

They haven’t all caught on to this easy solution.  Kielan made a note in her post “Every stanza ends when the text color changes.”

We haven’t had explicit conversations about line breaks.  I talked with Erin about her poetry style.  She tells me she is using a list poem style.  “Today I am going to stick with my list poem style.  I like the way it looks on the page.”

Kaiden said he didn’t think his poem was a poem.  “It’s more like a story.”

I said, “That’s OK.  When you type it, think about line breaks.”  His line breaks made the difference.  He was proud of the result.

Every day I am providing some sort of prompt, but I am allowing freedom of form.  I think, for now, that is working well.  I like to see my students experimenting with form and sounds and styles in poetry.  Poetry is like that.  Freeing and fun!

 

Don't feed the boy

Madison’s poem response to Don’t Feed the Boy by Irene Latham.

Do not feed
me. I’m like
a zoo animal.

Yes. That is true.
And I moo at you
like a cow.

And snap at
you like a
snake.

I care
like a
cat.

I’m fat
like a
pig.

I cluck
like a
chicken.

I spread
my tail feathers
like a peacock.

I stick to
things like a
snail.

I am
strong like
an elephant.

Madison, 2nd grade

Enter your link below:

 

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Discover. Play. Build.

Ruth Ayres invites us the celebrate each week. Click over to her site Discover. Play. Build. to read more celebrations.

It's my turn!

It’s my turn!

Today is Saturday, time to celebrate with Ruth Ayres and my fellow bloggers, but first I must stop and post a line to the Progressive Poem, the brainchild of author Irene Latham.  This year’s poem has taken on a pattern.  It rhymes, too, but I am grateful I don’t have to complete a rhyming line.  All I have to do is set up the next stanza.  The pattern of first lines began with Laura’s “A squall of hawk wings stirs the sky.”  Then Penny made the decision to repeat this pattern in “A cast of crabs engraves the sand.”  So all I have to do is fill in the blanks “A __da__ of __de___ __da-da____ ___di___ __doe___.”  Where do we want to go next?  From observing the sky to the ocean we have watched hawks and hummingbirds and crabs.

I have been working with images for my poem a day project.  My friend, Kimberley, in Maine sent me this picture of purple crocuses in her yard wilting in the recent cold snap.  I decided to keep us in the natural world but move into the plant world.

photo by Kimberley Moran

photo by Kimberley Moran

A squall of hawk wings stirs the sky
A hummingbird holds and then hies
If I could fly, I’d choose to be
Sailing through a forest of poet-trees
A cast of crabs engraves the sand
Delighting a child’s outstretched hand
If I could breathe under the sea
I’d dive, I’d dip, I’d dance with glee
A clump of crocuses crave the sun.
In the spirit of poetry and connecting through blogging, Kevin Hodgson left a comment on my abecedarian post yesterday that honored me as a writer, but also honored the entire blogging community.  Thanks, Kevin!
A
Blog has
Character beyond
Description:
Everywhere you write,
For yourself and readers,
Good words chewed like fine food, nourishing
Health and happiness and creative
Inspiration.
Just listen to the music of the dance,
Knowing you are invited to
Learn about the world through
Many voices, many stories, many
New ways of seeing the world, always
Open to
Possibilities.
Quell your qualms, for writing has
Real value beyond the shape and texture, and
Somewhere, someone will read your words
Though it might seem terribly silent at times,
Until that moment when they write a note that lets you know with
Veracity that your Truth resonates
With their Truth,
eXceeding the notion of one writer/one story;
You are writing the World together, dancing the
Zydeco Write!Kevin
— Cheated at X.
:0

 

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NPM2016

Poetry Friday round-up with Laura Purdie Salas

Poetry Friday round-up with Laura Purdie Salas

 

Day 5 is with Janet at Live your Poem

Day 5 is with Janet at Live your Poem

National Poetry Month is in full swing.  My students are steeping in poetry.  They are writing and reading poems every day.

Amy Ludwig VanDerwater is a favorite in my classroom, so I shared her site The Poem Farm on Wonder Wednesday.   She is writing poems every day about the Wonder of the Day from Wonderopolis.  The thing that caught my students’ eyes was Amy’s abecedarian poem, To Make Compost.

Some of my students took the challenge to write an abecedarian poem.  Emily was inspired to write about animals in a zoo.  She imagined all the animals and searched for verbs and adjectives to describe them.

Koo-Koo Zoo

Any zoo has animals
But ours are special we have:
Caring Cats
Dancing Donkeys
Eager Elephants
Flying Ferrets
Giggling Giraffes
Howling Hummingbirds
Ignorant Iguanas
Jogging Jellyfish
Karaoke Kangaroos
Laughing Llamas
Magic Monkeys
Nerdy Newts
Offended Octopi
Parachuting Parrots
Quizzing Quails
Racing Rhinos
Sailing Snakes
Tap Dancing Tigers
Untidy Unicorns
Vanishing Vultures
Wrestling Walrusses
X-raying Eels
Yodeling Yachts
Zipping Zebras

–Emily, 5th grade

Vannisa worked for 2 days on her poem.  She used a dictionary to help her find the words she wanted to say.  She was looking for unique words to express her philosophy of kindness.

All of your actions are
Beyond what you think

Continuous caring
Decreases your selfishness
Exercises your soul

Follow
Good
Hearts
Into a
Jungle where
Kindness and
Love are
Major,
Never wasted

On a fast
Pace,
Quickly
Racing,
Spreading,
Tailoring
Under and over
Vines

Wildfire-spreading,
X-ing out negativity,
Yawing around the city,
Zigzagging everywhere, is love

–Vannisa, 6th grade

I am writing a poem a day to images.  This is a picture of flowers growing in our front flower bed taken through the arrowslits in the entryway to our house.  Our house is like a castle, complete with a turret with arrowslits.  When I Googled arrowslits, I the word embrasure came up as a synonym.   Here is a draft of my first ever abecedarian.

flowers in the window

A window
Beyond the
Downstairs
Embrasure

Flowers burst open
Give light to the view
Here, I stop
Invite spring in

Just to
Kiss blinking stars
Linger outside for this
Moment

Never would I’ve imagined
Open stars landing here
Popping  and
Quickening to life, they

Return to
Stand
Tall each year
Under this

Veranda of the castle
Wings waiting to fly
eXciting space with
Yearning and
Zest

–Margaret Simon

 

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NPM2016

Day 5 is with Liz today. Click here.

Day 5 is with Liz today. Click here.

Join the Spiritual Thursday round up at Reading, Teaching, Learning.

Join the Spiritual Thursday round up at Reading, Teaching, Learning.

For Spiritual Thursday, we are reflecting on the word “Merciful” today, Bobbie Ann Taylor’s One Little Word.

foggy sunrise

A Merciful Cinquain

Failure
clouds my vision
like fog in the morning
drapes the coming sunshine in
mercy

Every morning I drive to my school in the country while the sun rises.  I am often in awe of the way the light plays in the sky.  This image of fog covering the sun made me think about my feelings of failure.  These are natural, I suppose, as a teacher who cares deeply for her work with children and as a writer putting her words out to the world every day.

Liz Steinglass inspired me to use a cinquain form (2, 4, 6, 8, then 2 syllable lines.)

One tenet of faith that I have trouble grasping is mercy.  We are already forgiven even before we ask it.  When I fail, I tend to wallow in self-doubt.  I need to repeat the mantra I am worthy until I believe it.

“Surely goodness and mercy will follow all of my days.  I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” Psalm 23

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NPM2016

Day 5 is with Carol at Beyond Literacy Link

Day 5 is with Carol at Beyond Literacy Link

Charles Simic in his poem “Stone” invites us to “go inside a stone.”  So I invited my students to explore rocks.  I found a collection in the closet.  Some child of mine collected them.  I thought I remembered them being there.

I tried to write with my kids.  I listed 5 steps for finding a poem: 1. describe it, 2. analyze it, 3. compare it, 4. associate it, 5. apply it.  Source for this activity is found here in the River of Words teacher’s guide. 

But I was stuck.  Oh, I wrote some lines like these:

The stepping stone
for my foot
grips and holds
me in wonder.

Another try:

On this smooth stone,
time stands still.

Some days I can start and stop like this all day, but eventually something emerges.  Today, nothing.  I was taking myself way too seriously.

Until Jacob said, “Inside a rock is a rock and a rock and another rock, a never ending chain of rocks.”

I wrote his words down in my notebook.  Took them straight out of the air and a poem started rolling out right there.

Jacob wasn’t as successful.  He was disappointed.  No, not disappointed exactly.  He was mad.  I took his words and made a poem with them.  This is my disclaimer.  With complete credit of the original lines to Jacob.

Jacob’s Rock

Inside a rock
is a rock
and a rock
and another rock.

A never ending chain of rocks.

Inside a shell
is a shell
and another shell
and a crab,
a crab?

A creepy, crawling crab in a never ending shell.

Inside my heart
is a beat
and a beat
and another beat

Beating hard as a rock for you.

–Margaret Simon (with help from Jacob.)

Free image from Pixabay

Free image from Pixabay

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NPM2016

Join the Two Writing Teachers blog for March Slice of Life Challenge.

Join the Two Writing Teachers blog for March Slice of Life Challenge.

Day 5 is at Penny and Her Jots

Day 5 is at Penny and Her Jots

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Writing poems can be serious business. The first day back after spring break I asked my students to think hard about poetry. We read together a poem from the Teaching Guide for the River of Words Young Poets and Artists on the Nature of Things. (Handout 4:Writing from film) I highly recommend this guide for great poetry lessons written by my friends Harriet Maher and Connie McDonald.

The poem spoke in an ominous tone about the destruction of our earth. Students picked out these word, demented, shattered, purged, and monsters, as negative tone words. They noticed that the poem was a sad commentary on what we humans do to our earth home.

Then I played the first 8 minutes of the documentary of Ansel Adams.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvt1ImIKi0U

While we watched the video, we collected words and phrases. We all wrote poems. Many of the students’ poems reflected the negative tone of the poem we read together. My favorite student poem is from Erin. She wrote how the silence was too loud. You can read her poem here.

Free image from Wikipedia.

Free image from Wikipedia.

Ansel Adams, 1902-1984

The artist transformed
moments into wild majesty
expressing in
exalted language of photography
how small we really are.

Among the tall trees
or the great mountains,
our humanness is separate–
a communion in the presence
of mystery.

Even in the absence of color,
in shades of black and white,
fragments are shattered
into a mosaic of truth.

We understand the fragile nature of things.

–Margaret Simon

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NPM2016

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Day 4 is at Random Noodling with Diane

Day 4 is at Random Noodling with Diane

I first “wrote” this poem by speaking to my phone in the notes app. I didn’t start with a photographed image. If I could have, I would have taken a picture of the heron, but as we watched the scene, my cat snuck out and scared it off.

Instead I took a picture looking up at our church.

Church spire

Sunday

On this day
I have plans,
compartments in my mind
like squares on the calendar.

But first, I look out
at the heron on the bayou.
He stretches his neck
into the bright morning sun.

I sip my warm coffee,
listen to the news,
the call of the mourning dove.

I will worship today
stick my neck out long
to catch the rays of the sun,
listen to an orchestra on the lawn.

–Margaret Simon

Here is a link to a padlet from JoEllen McCarthy from The Educator Collaborative with links to great #PoetryLove sites.

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Poem-a-day #3, lune by Margaret Simon, image poems

Poem-a-day #3, lune by Margaret Simon, image poems

napo2016button2

 

Please use this button on your site for DigiLit Sunday posts

Please use this button on your site for DigiLit Sunday posts

Yesterday was a glorious day to spend outside. But inside there was a valuable video conference, free PD in PJs at The Educator Collaborative.  So many rock stars in the education field all in one place.  I couldn’t pass it up, so after a walk with my dog, I came inside to watch and learn.

Some of my online friends were there, too.  I saw their Tweets.  I’ve invited them to reflect on this conference as well, so I am hoping we will have other DigiLit link-ups today.

The first hang-out presentation that I watched was #PoetryLove with JoEllen McCarthy, Amy Ludwig VanDerwater, Janet Wong, Alan Katz, Kim Doele & Members of the Poetry Club.  I enjoyed hearing some poems read aloud and the talk around how poetry has a place in the curriculum all year long.  Amy is writing a poem a day to Wonders from Wonderopolis.  My students love Wonderopolis, and I will show them Amy’s work this week as we begin our own poem a day writing projects. 

Kim Doele shared how she leads a Poetry Club at her school and writes grants to get visiting poets to her school.  Here is her post on hosting a poet at your school.

Catherine Flynn captured Mary Howard’s three power conditions that lead to deep reading.

tweet deep readingMary Howard repeated often that passion is important to reading.  If we don’t have a passion for what we are reading, we will not be able to do deep thinking.

 “Passion drives the deep thinking bus.”  –Dr. Mary Howard 

 

read aloud tweet

Joining Dr. Mary Howard was Linda Hoyt who discussed the importance of read aloud in every grade level.  I loved how some Tweeters were capturing quotes in fancy backgrounds.  The above Tweet was created by Leah O’Donnell.

Leah also captured her reflection about Kate Roberts and Maggie B Roberts’ closing session.

Notes from Leah O'Donnell

Notes from Leah O’Donnell

I used the notepad on my computer to capture thoughts.

notes on ed collab roberts

After the closing session, I went to Walmart to buy a sketchbook to make a demonstration notebook.  What a practical idea!  Kate and Maggie have a video about this teaching tool on their website here.

This rich conference went on in my kitchen, my living room, and in my bedroom.  It went wherever my laptop would go.  I ate lunch, folded clothes, and took notes and notes. I will go back to the archived sessions that I didn’t see.  Thanks to Chris Lehman and his fabulous team for this free and amazing video series.

If you have written a post reflecting on the Ed Collaborative Gathering or on any aspect of digital literacy, link up below.  Please read and comment on other posts.

 

 

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Discover. Play. Build.

Ruth Ayres invites us the celebrate each week. Click over to her site Discover. Play. Build. to read more celebrations.

In the month of April, the whole Kidlitosphere lights up for National Poetry Month. There are so many exciting projects going on.

The gatherer of all Kidlit poetry postings is Jama at Jama’s Alphabet Soup.

2016 Kidlit Progressive Poem copy

Today the Progressive poem is here with Joy.

 

Click the NaPoWriMo button for more about daily writing prompts and poem sharing.

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I am writing a poem-a-day to images. You can join me by leaving a poem in the comments or a link to your blog. Use #imagepoems on Twitter.  Today’s image is Spanish moss.  It hangs all over the trees in my neighborhood.

Spanish Moss

Spanish Moss

Columbarium

Moss crawls like skeletons in the trees,
a lacy tent for playful squirrels.
Even my cat, usually lolling and lazy,
joins in the chase, paws at the waving ghosts.

The moss speaks to the heavens,
the heavens that opened up with wind
and a storm yesterday when we placed
your ashes in the dovecote

outside the church
where you can live forever
in the eyes of God, or, at least, I’ll
say hello when I pass by on Sunday.

We do not know what time
has prepared for us
to walk in or to walk out
with ashes on our foreheads,
and now you are ashes in the tomb.

What does this say about the squirrels?
Do they know something?
Who are they chasing?

–Margaret Simon

 

Process: When I wrote the poem to this image of moss, I had returned from a funeral for a church member.  I did not know him well, but every funeral is a deeply spiritual experience.  And I was moved by the sudden wind and heavy rain that fell immediately following the placement of his urn into the columbarium.  I looked up columbarium on Wikipedia and found the word origin of “columba” refers to the compartments used for doves, dovecote.  I somehow think Charles will like playing in the trees with cats and squirrels.  And now that I have written it, I will say hello to him when I pass each Sunday.

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