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Archive for the ‘Poetry’ Category

Poetry Dot Day!

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, Teaching, tagged , on September 15, 2017| 12 Comments »

Poetry Friday posts are with Michelle at Today’s Little Ditty.

 

dots

One of my favorite days of the school year is Dot Day.  My students love it, too.  Today we will be making creative dots in class.  I’ll post them next week.

In preparation for our Friday celebration, I shared Laura Purdie Salas’s Dot poem.

 

Laura Purdie Salas

As a class, we brainstormed a list of things that were dots.  I asked my students to write a rhyming couplet with one or two of the ideas we listed.

Writing a rhyming couplet seems easy, at first.  I quickly discovered that rhyming doesn’t go together with making sense in kids’ writing.  We had lots of a lots rhyming with dots.  We even had cots and bots.  We also had internal rhyme rather than end rhyme, slant rhyme, and some just plain nonsense.

One student said, “This is hard.”

I responded, “Yes, but isn’t it fun when it works?”

We persevered and created a poem everyone was happy with. I am sharing two poems from each of my ELA groups.

 

A Pixel on the Page

A pixel on the page is just the start
for what may become a famous work of art.

Everything is made up of matter,
even the mad hatter.

Dots are everywhere
as well as over there.

A dot is the sun. A dot is the moon
disappearing around noon.

The earth is a dot
in not just one spot.

Want to make a rhyme,
running out of time?
Who you gonna call?
The majestic, dotty, narwhal.

One dot, two dots,
three dots, four,
five dots, six dots,
seven dots,
let’s add some more.

A dot is a dot
and there are quite a lot.

All you need is a spot
to make a dot.

I’m a dot, you’re a dot, everything’s a dot.
A dot can be super hot
spilled on the floor
dots,
        dots,
                 dots
                           galore.

 

 

Dot to Dot

Put an egg in a pot to boil
water bubbles, bump and coil.

My fingerprint marks a dot
leaving my dirt in a swirling spot.

A period on the end of a line
On a piece of paper ready to sign.

Potatoes, tomatoes, grapes on the vine
A salad combined for us to dine.

A seed that will grow into a tree
pollinated by a tiny little bee.

A dot…
a dot is a lens on the tip of your eye
looking for clouds high in the sky.

A dot is spot we can see
like that chocolate chip in my cookie.

 

 

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Slice of Life: Teaching 9/11

Posted in Gifted Education, Poetry, Slice of Life, tagged , , on September 12, 2017| 12 Comments »

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

 

New York, NY, September 13, 2001 — Urban Search and Rescue specialists continue to search for survivors amongst the wreckage at the World Trade Center.
Photo by Andrea Booher/ FEMA News Photo

I never know if it’s the right thing to do.  I didn’t write it into my lesson plans.  I hesitate every year about teaching 9/11 to my gifted students.  But there’s a part of me that thinks they need to know the truth.  The need to have some seed of understanding about the meaning of that tragic day.

In my email on Monday morning, I read “Teach this Poem” from the Academy of American Poets. I forgot that I had signed up for this email, but I was glad it came.  The lesson gave me strong footing for talking about the unspeakable tragedy of 16 years ago.

First we looked at a photo of the destruction, writing down things we saw.

Some words collected from the image

dust
ash
destruction
devastation
war
dark
despair
collapsed
ruined lives

Then we read Lucille Clifton’s poem Tuesday, 9/11/01.  We noticed in the structure of the poem spaces, no capital letters.  This structure, someone said, expressed how raw and true her response was.  One student read it aloud.  The others hummed at the end, that hum when words hit you right in the gut.

I looked at their faces, the faces of my students who were innocent of terror and fear, but they heard it, they saw it, they got it.  And this understanding made me so extremely sad.

At the end of class, Faith came to me and said, “I need a hug.”

She knew it was me who needed the hug.

How do we best teach this history that is still so new and raw?  Pictures, poems, words, talk, tears.  That’s how.

My students wrote their poetic responses. Some wrote the facts they learned.  Some wrote their own feelings.  Some wrote through the eyes of the helpers.

I wish I didn’t have to teach this day.  I wish this day never happened.  I hope my students walked away with not only the details of the tragedy, but also a heart of kindness, hopefulness, and (please God) peace!

 

Madison’s journal page

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Poetry Friday: Let Evening Come

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, tagged , on September 8, 2017| 16 Comments »

Poetry Friday posts are with Matt at Radio, Rhythm, and Rhyme.

 

There are times when a poem passes your way, like a butterfly on the rose bush or the tree frog on the window glass.  It comes and hovers a minute with the sole purpose of reminding you that God is real and present.

I felt this lighting when I opened Jane Kenyon’s A Hundred White Daffodils and found “Let Evening Come.”  With all the natural disasters in our midst, we need this reminder.

Let Evening Come

Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.
Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.
Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.
Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.
To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.
Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.
Jane Kenyon, “Let Evening Come” from Collected Poems. Copyright © 2005 by the Estate of Jane Kenyon. Reprinted with the permission of Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org.
Duperier bridge sunset

Bayou Sunset: Let evening come…

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Empathetic Cypress: A Poem Video

Posted in Gratitude, Poetry, Poetry Friday, tagged , , on September 1, 2017| 8 Comments »

Poetry Friday posts are with Kathryn Apel all the way from Australia.

 

Most of my week was spent inside my house watching the weather channel and wondering what Hurricane Harvey had in mind.  He was a destructive force in South Texas.  But here in Acadiana, we got some rain, some wind, and three days off of school.  I am happy we didn’t have to endure the suffering of flooding and wind damage, but there’s a part of me that feels guilty about that.

I’m in charge of this month’s #10foundwords article for Laura Shovan’s Facebook poetry project.  I chose an article that Tabatha Yeatts posted about how we can help Houston: Ways to Help People During Hurricane Harvey.

The ten words I found are: storm, contribute, massive, functioning, need, home, shelter, giving, dramatic, midst.

While the storm was heading north to dissipate, a few bands of wind gusts passed our way.  I love the way the cypress trees bend and wave with the wind.  They are designed to withstand hurricanes and tropical storms.  I went outside to video the trees. When the wind passes through the trees, it sounds like waves on the seaside.

I realized that the video could enhance my poem, so I worked on an iMovie.  If I had been teaching, I never would have had time for this kind of creative play.  The grace of this storm was time to create. The grace of poetry is words to express my deepest empathy.

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Hurricane Poetry

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, tagged , on August 26, 2017| 14 Comments »

Poetry Friday posts are with Jone at Check it Out.

Image from Nola.com

What do you do when there’s a hurricane in the Gulf? Write a poem about it, of course. Here in South Louisiana, we are no strangers to the dangers of hurricanes. Hurricane Harvey is threatening, but all models show the brunt of the storm heading into west Texas, miles away from us. We will have rain, days and days of rain, which could lead to some flooding. That remains to be seen.

I asked my students to list all the words they could think of about hurricanes. Their lists included words like danger, wind, storm, and bigger words like magnificent and treacherous. We talked about the poetry form called a cinquain. We counted syllables in the words we had listed. Doom and gloom poems emerged.

The weather channel is on.  We are watching the progress.  These weather events are scary yet intriguing.  We can channel our thoughts and worries and fascination into words.

Tracking
hurricane’s path
swirling charged red center
unwanted catastrophic storm
Gulf beast

–Margaret Simon

Massive
Dangerous floods
Treacherous destruction
Magnificent monstrous mammoth
Scary
–Noah, 6th grade

Jacob chose to write a free verse poem. I like to introduce forms, but also choice. There should always be choice.

Hurricane Harvey

A spinning circle of destruction
On a treacherous journey through ruined parts of Earth
Walking through this dark thick rain, trying to find home
I see the eye of this magnificent beast
I stare as the tornadoes and rain fly away in the sky
I see the Sun, I know that this monster of wind and rain is over.

–Jacob, 4th grade

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Poetry Friday: Total Eclipse

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, Teaching, Writing, tagged , on August 18, 2017| 15 Comments »

Poetry Friday posts are with Kay at A Journey through the Pages.

Monday, August 21st is the day. Here in South Louisiana we will get about 72% of the total eclipse. On this site, you can put in your zip code to see what time is best for viewing and how much you will see.

Kelly Gallagher sent out this article of the week for students to read closely.

NASA is full of interesting information.  I even found a lesson for my students here that I adapted for younger kids.

On Facebook for Laura Shovan’s 10 words project, Jone MacCulloch posted this:

My students enjoy writing poems about science.  This 10-word prompt worked well for those kids who don’t know what to write when given a more open topic.  By doing this activity, we discussed words we didn’t know and then used them in a poem.  What better way to incorporate science topics, vocabulary, and reading comprehension?  Poetry does it all!

Solar Eclipse

As the sky turns obscure

the shadow will reveal the corona.

The eclipse will collect luminosity

as if it is understanding

that it is interconnected

with the universe.

By now the Solar eclipse should be charged

since the last random appearance.

–Faith, 6th grade

I drafted a poem alongside my students.  Mine is not about the solar eclipse, but an eclipse of another kind.

Cicadas Sing to the Sun

Charged with luminosity,
cicada songs rise in a corona of sound.

My shadow follows their lead,
not to understanding, but
to hope.

When hearts are eclipsed
by misunderstanding,
we forget
our interconnected stories–
yours, mine, ours,
theirs, too.

Obscurity reveals our vulnerability.

When we are too close to the edge
of possibility, one step forward
can change everything.

Be careful where you step.

–Margaret Simon

 

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Slice of Standing Strong

Posted in Gratitude, Poetry, Spiritual Growth, Writing, tagged , , on August 15, 2017| 8 Comments »

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

I, like many of you, have been sad, mad, and disgusted by the recent happenings right here in our own country. In our own nation where freedom has been a song sung for generations, white supremacists have stained the honor of that freedom with hypocrisy, hatred, and violence. And, like many of you, I don’t know what to do with my feelings.

On Sunday evening, I answered a Facebook call to a vigil, a simple gathering of diverse people who held candles, sang songs, read poems, quoted speeches, and together held each other up in prayer. We celebrated our freedom to do this on public ground without fear.

I don’t believe that attending a vigil will change much, but it was someplace to go and be with my community in support of the community of Charlottesville. Charlottesville never asked for their town to be the marketplace for hatred. They never wanted angry men carrying tikki torches to make a spectacle of their freedom. How did this happen? I have no answers.

On Monday morning, I spotted this brief rainbow. To me, this is always a sign of God’s promise. We all need to let go of discrimination, prejudice, and intolerance. We are better than this.

My friend Nettie attended Sunday’s vigil. She read aloud the poem, Stonewall Nation. She read it with conviction and passion.

I hope these dark days will pass, and all of us will join together in being a better people and a better nation.

Come on brothers, march along.
We’re all gonna sing our song.
Right now, right now.
Sisters Take me by the hand,
We’re gonna build our promise land,
Right now, right now.

And the Stonewall Nation’s,
Gonna have its liberation.
Wait and see, just wait and see.
You can take your tolerance and stow it,
We’re gonna be ourselves and show it.
The Stonewall Nation is gonna be free.

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Happy Poetry Friday Birthday Treasures

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, Teaching, Writing, tagged , , on August 10, 2017| 32 Comments »

Poetry Friday posts are here today. Scroll down and click the green frog.

Welcome to my birthday poetry party.  I am a birthday triplet with Linda Mitchell and Julieanne Harmatz, both of whom I originally met through blogging.  Now they are real life writing critique friends.  Hop over to their blogs to say Happy Birthday! Julieanne

Linda

I am sharing some poetic treasures.  Joy Acey sent me a beautiful watercolor painting of an iris along with a fluttering haiku for the Summer Poetry Swap.   She also sent a blank card, so I put it into WordSwag and wrote a response haiku to Joy.

Joy wrote in her note to me that she considered this alternate third line.
Blue Dutch Irises
flutter to the wind’s command
Happy Birthday wishes!

Sea blue echoes
Ukulele birthday song
Windcall my name
–Margaret Simon

School has started.  I found on a shelf in my classroom an old copy of Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg.  I read to my students the chapter “Be Specific” in which she quotes William Carlos Williams, “Write what is under your nose.”  Then I read aloud River of Words by Jen Bryant and Melissa Sweet about the life of William Carlos Williams.  Writing prompt: Write a poem that uses something specific and ordinary and begin with “So much depends upon…” after W.C. Williams’ poem with the same first line.

I was pretty pleased with my poem about the sparkles of condensation on a glass of mint iced tea until I was absolutely blown away by my students’ writing.

So much depends upon
the warm glow of the fairy lights,
silver and golden with gems and hearts
gently pushing me to the ocean of dreams.

Drifting calmly until the waves
rock me to the land of reality,
until the fairies and their lights
send me out again.

Erin, 6th grade

 

So much depends upon
the brass uniform of a senior dragonfly
soaring past
the barking, yelling, chirping, rumbling
noises of the day.

Lynzee, 3rd grade

 

I can already tell that this is going to be an amazing year of poetry writing. Did you notice “brass uniform of a senior dragonfly?” We were all blown away by that line.

Link your Poetry Friday post below.

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A Slice of Local Art

Posted in Poetry, Solomon House, tagged , on July 25, 2017| 5 Comments »

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

Have you ever carried a snail
in the palm of your hand
to study the way it moves
along a slime line?
And named it?

Have you nurtured a succulent plant
from a cutting
gently placed in soft soil
pushed by a wish?

Have you met an artist named Anna
who loves snails and succulents
who tells stories with her pencils
who holds conversations with nature?

Anna cradles snails and gives them names
like Oliver, Scott, and Alice.
Her fine young hands
touch plants
and paint
magically making them grow stories.

A sea turtle sustains a fall forest on its back.
A snail looks toward towering tree houses.
Professor Fox leads you on an exploration.

With Anna, all things are possible
and life is all good news.
Through her imagination,
she invites you
to pretend play a bit.

Thoreau is Anna’s favorite writer.

Anna Amelia Contrell
@jarofpencils on Instagram
rumpledcrow.etsy.com

I met Anna at an art show this weekend. I bought a watercolor drawing from her.

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Poetry Friday: Dancing with Poetry

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, tagged , on July 21, 2017| 16 Comments »

Poetry Friday posts are with Katie today at The Logonauts.

 

My Southern comrade, Keri Collins Lewis, sent me a gem of a poem this week.  She knows where I live and how much I enjoy dancing with my husband.  She captured this in a wonderful poem celebrating me.   Keri, I cherish your words.  Thank you, darlin’. (Say it with a Mississippi drawl.)

 

Last week I led a teachers writing institute.  I invited our PF friend, Catherine Flynn, to present via Skype about visual literacy.  She left us with a Marc Chagall painting to ponder.  Since Keri wrote about “my love” and we are nearing our 35th wedding anniversary, I am inclined to share my response with you.

The Promenade

In a geometric village,
sculpted lawns, a steepled church,
houses on the hillside,
a man holds his bride’s hand.
His touch sends her floating
on the wind like a pink kite
dancing with the clouds.

Your touch does this to me
even now, far from this village.
Over the landscape of life,
your soft gentle love
is enough to send
me flying, reaching
for the joy-sky.

–Margaret Simon

 

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