William Carlos Williams’ poetry has something to teach us about imagery and noticing the ordinary. His famous poem about the wheelbarrow describes a specific image. My students immediately imagined the setting as a farm. Using magnetic poetry words, we found images to create our own “So Much Depends Upon” poems.
The fifth graders are in state testing this week. They test on computers. Since my classroom is in a corner one of the computer labs, I had to find another place to teach. It was a gorgeous spring day, so we went outside to the garden. Kaia wrote this magnetic poem:
So much depends upon
a misty garden
spring smell symphony
near the white sea.
We were looking around the garden and found four monarch caterpillars eating the milkweed. Kaia talked about all she was learning in science about the caterpillars. Gathering words from the air (not using any toys), I wrote the following poem:
So much depends
upon
the tall
milkweed
dotted
with sunspots
feeding
hungry caterpillars
in
the school garden
You can read more student poems at our Kidblog site.
(A word about WordPress. I am having trouble with formatting my posts. They look correctly aligned to the left margin in the editor mode, but when published, everything changes to centered. I am getting frustrated with this and don’t know how to fix it. Does anyone reading this post know what’s going on with the wordpress editor?)
Reflections on the Teche 
Beautiful images, Margaret. I don’t know WordPress, sorry. But I do know that if I copy & paste in from Microsoft Word, sometimes the ‘code’ comes through, too, & that is the problem. If you can go into HTML & change it, that is one way, or just type straight into the post with left alignment. Or, put into a box from some other app?
I’m so glad to read about a positive outcome of testing! I love imagining you and your poets outside, absorbing the world. I can’t help you with the wordpress issue. Last night I pushed publish and my entire post vanished, never to return. I wonder if there’s some sort of technological thing happening there.
Thoughts of children playing with poetry outside in the garden, brings back memories of 2nd graders doing the same. I captured Kaia’s poem because she brought me back to my Spring Symphony poem. (word choice) Your poem and photo are a wonderful pair.