Find more Poetry Friday at Teacher Dance with Linda.
Join the Chalk-a-bration at Betsy Hubbard’s site Teaching Young Writers.
It’s Chill-a-bration Time! That’s Halloween language for Chalk-a-bration. Halloween language for Poetry Friday is “Poetry Freakday!” I hope you enjoy our Freaky chalk poems. My students chalked up the sidewalks and chilled up an Emaze presentation. It was a sunny day, so we added some spooky shadows to our chalk poems.
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Autumn is a wonderful season for writing poems. Donna Smith shared her Fall Poetry Zeno on her blog, Mainly Write, for Poetry Friday. Holly Mueller shared an autumn poem by Bliss Carmen along with her original poem and students’ poems.
On Thursday, I presented the poem Autumn Grasses by Margaret Gibson. My students paraphrased it and talked about the imagery and metaphor. Then they wrote their own poems about autumn. Tyler went back to a picture postcard of Georgia O’Keefe’s Autumn Leaves that he had written about before. I love that he knew where the picture was and felt comfortable enough to grab it again for inspiration.
Autumn Leaves by Georgia O’Keefe
On Friday, I showed my students how I had made a poem movie with my poem This Peace. I suggested they might want to try to make their own poem movie using Animoto. I think this was Tyler’s first time to use Animoto. He found the perfect background, and after he finished putting in his images and words and the movie was produced, I overheard a gasp. He was totally enthralled and impressed with his own creation. This is what creativity in the classroom is all about, that Wow feeling.
I encourage you to teach an autumn poem and make poem movies in Animoto. You may use Tyler’s as a model. Please let me know if you do. I love to know when I have inspired creativity in others.
Find more Poetry Friday at Today’s Little Ditty with Michelle H Barnes.
Migrating starlings, over the southern Israeli village of Tidhar, on February 12, 2014. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)
My students were mesmerized this week by the Wonder of the Week, Starling Murmurations. As I often do with these Wonder lessons, I asked them to choose 4 of the Wonder Words. Then we watched the video, looked at The Atlantic site, and selected a picture to write to. The above image was selected by Erin. Erin is a third grader. She has a confidence about her that I wish I had. She sat writing her poem and told me, “I am writing a staircase poem.”
“What is a staircase poem?”
“Look at the lines. They look like the steps on a staircase.”
I think Erin just created her own form.
Ready, set, fly,
One bird takes flight,
another one and another one
until there’s a million in the sky
making an illusion of love as one goes by
washing over me.
Come along and see.
To believe is the key.
The key is to believe.
So graceful and startling,
a routine with meaning. Just
believe and you will see that anything
can be beautiful if you just put love into it.
–Erin, 3rd grade
I showed my students my poem movie from Spiritual Thursday. (You can see the post here.) I made the suggestion that they make a poem movie with their starling zenos. Some of my students are loving J. Patrick Lewis’s new form. A zeno is a great form for writing nonfiction poems. Enjoy these poem movies made using Animoto.
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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.
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.
I have been thinking lately about what makes magic happen in writing workshop. I’m not sure, but I do know that my students feel like they are writers. This year I have a single third grader in my gifted group. She is pretty capable of doing what all the older kids are doing. But the other day, on a whim, she brought me this poem she had written. She glowed. She was so proud of it. I don’t know where it came from. It was not any prompt we had talked about. She explained to me that it just came to her. Maybe it was a stroke of genius. Or maybe it was a classroom atmosphere of poetry appreciation and writing freedom. Whatever it is and wherever the inspiration came from, I know enough to celebrate this lovely poem today on Poetry Friday.
Red petals flying with the wind.
O such grace dancing through the wind.
Sparkling shimmering as the sun joins you.
Even at night you’re dancing in the moon light.
–Erin
You can leave comments directly to Erin, aka Pegasus Lover, on our kidblog site.
Ruth Ayres invites us the celebrate each week. Click over to her site Discover. Play. Build. to read more celebrations.
I am pleased, honored, amazed to announce that I am the 2014 recipient of the NCTE Donald Graves Award for the teaching of writing. The award will be presented to me on Thursday, Nov. 20th in Washington, D.C. at the Elementary Section Get-Together during the annual convention. Follow this link to see my name in lights and a link to my reflective essay. I owe a huge shout out to all of my blogging friends who have supported me in the development of my teaching philosophy. I am so blessed to be a part of this supportive community.
Minga, my mother-in-law, sent me flowers to celebrate the Donald Graves Award.
I want to celebrate the outpouring of love and compassion from the kidlit blogosphere in expressing sympathy for my student Emily’s loss of her mother this week. I will be attending the funeral today and sharing with Emily your messages. Amy VanDerwater of The Poem Farm shared a poem yesterday that was inspired by my post about Emily. Emily and I are both touched by this kindness. Visit Amy’s site to read her special poem of empathy.
Margaret Simon lives on the Bayou Teche in New Iberia, Louisiana. She is a retired elementary gifted teacher who writes poetry and children's books. Welcome to a space of peace, poetry, and personal reflection. Walk in kindness.
Reflections on the Teche 