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Fabulous Fibs

Posted in Poetry Friday, Teaching, Writing, tagged fibonacci poem, Fish in a Tree, Greg Pincus, Lynda Mullaly Hunt, Voxer, Wat Buddhist Temple on October 30, 2015| 11 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up with Mary Lee at A Year of Reading

Do you know about the famous Fibonacci Sequence? The ages old sequence that creates a spiral, a shape found in nature? The mathematical sequence is 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8…Do you see the pattern? More information (including algebraic equations) can be found at Math is Fun.

I had forgotten about using the sequence in poetry until a colleague introduced it to our 6th grade enrichment group. We are working on Unsung Hero projects. Our previous meeting had been a field trip to see and hear about heroes in our own town. She asked the students to recall the field trip by writing a Fib poem. I wrote about the Buddhist Temple in our local Laotian community.

Wat Thammarattanaram, New Iberia, LA

Stands
tall
above
Buddhist monks
humbly giving self,
Temple of golden ornaments,
Temple of sacrifice,
meditate on lasting love.
–Margaret Simon

A Fib poem follows the syllable count as in the mathematical sequence, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8. And if you are feeling wordy, you can tack on a line of 13 and 21.

A few years ago I had used this form with my students when we were sharing The 14 Fibs of Gregory K by Greg Pincus.

I tried out the form on my other students. I asked them to write about our field trip to New Orleans, the Aquarium and Insectarium, last week. The exercise was quite a challenge. I, too, struggled. But that’s what writing is all about, right? We made a padlet.

Each afternoon, I read aloud another chapter of Fish in a Tree. We usually write notices and wonders to add to the Voxer chat with other classes, but yesterday, I asked Jacob to write a Fib poem with me about Ally, the main character. We started over 3 times. Jacob was being very patient. Each time he’d write the syllable count down the margin of his journal page. Finally we liked what was coming, but we couldn’t quite get that last line. Then Jacob just blurted it out. Some days my young students blow my mind. We recorded it on the Voxer chat.

Why?
Why?
Ally
thinks she’s dumb,
so afraid to tell,
hates being locked up in her brain.
–Jacob

Using strict forms can be frustrating, but when it works, when we discover a winning line, we can say “Boom, Gotcha” to that Fib!

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Poetry on a Postcard

Posted in Poetry Friday, tagged poetry, postcard on October 23, 2015| 10 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up with Jama at Jama’s Alphabet Soup.

Margaret,
Have you ever dipped your toes
into the ocean,
only to feel the sting of the
past?

Some memory–some history–
Some love or loss that
floats beneath the surface.

And while we marvel at its beauty,
we wince in the pain
of that which had once been
forgotten.

–Kevin

Kevin,
Sometimes a postcard comes
in the mailbox, the rusty squeaky
hinge of it wakes you up.

This card holds a gift
and a piece of your heart
you didn’t even know was there.

You cry. Then smile,
marveling at the power of
words to totally change
your mood.

Thanks,
Margaret

Kevin’s post about this postcard project is here.

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Writer’s Block

Posted in Poetry Friday, Teaching, Writing, tagged Fish in a Tree, Global Read Aloud, Lynda Mullaly Hunt, reader response on October 16, 2015| 11 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up with my dear friend, Amy, at The Poem Farm.

Mrs. Simon, I don’t know what to write.
Oh, no! I don’t have anything to write about!
I have writer’s block today, Mrs. Simon.

These words echo in my classroom regularly. Why? Because we are all writers. And we all know that writing is hard.

I asked my students to write long about a book we are reading. (Global Read Aloud: Fish in a Tree by Lynda Mullaly HUnt.) You could hear the sighs. For some reason, that bad word…long…sent them into total fear. So I saddled up to the computer connected to the board. After stumbling over the necessary technology to get them to see what I was writing, I set about modeling a long writing.

I actually surprised myself that I could do this on-demand-in-front-of-everybody writing from nothing. But I realized that it all comes from practice. I just started typing and the words came. My students laughed at my typos as I was trying to type quickly. They noticed that my long writing was only 140 words. The assignment became less intimidating.

Yet, one of my best writers sat in front of her computer not typing. And it seemed the longer she stared at the blank page, the harder it got for her to start. I didn’t have a very good answer for her. It happens. We’re writers. We are going to have those days when nothing comes to mind. So I let her leave class with this instruction, “Think about what you may want to write about and we’ll start again tomorrow.” Some writers need time to think.

I know this is Poetry Friday, and you are asking yourself, “Where’s the poem?” Sometimes with writing, you need to write about what you need to write about.

Kielan is a writer. She is in 6th grade, and I’ve taught her since she was in second grade. She’s had her share of writer’s block, but she is connecting with Ally in Fish in a Tree. This is her long writing about how she was bullied like Ally.

In Lynda Mullaly Hunt’s book Fish In A Tree, Ally’s at the restaurant where her mother works. Her mother is a waitress there. While Ally is at the restaurant suddenly her “friends” walk in. Shay and Jessica walk in the restaurant and start talking to Ally.

Ally tries to resist them, but her mother thinks she should talk with them. Her mother doesn’t know what Shay and Jessica do to Ally. They talk to her about the sympathy card Ally gave to their teacher. Something similar like this happened to me too.

I was in 4th grade when it happened. A girl named Emily was in my class. Every time a teacher was near she was nice to me, but when there was no teacher near she was mean to me. When she was nice to me I would reject her and then I would get in trouble.

She sat right in front of me in class and we were kind of enemies. I had to read aloud in class and answer the question. I read the passage right, but I got the answer wrong. Then she got called on and she got the question right. She looked at me, gave me a mean look, and then rolled her eyes. After school she saw me in Mcdonald’s at Walmart. She called me smart, her friend, pretty, and nice, only because my mother was around, but then the next day at school, she called me dumb, mean, her enemy, and ugly. She made me think I was dumb. Just like Ally felt in the story.

I made my own quote. “Trust no one” and “Never trust a phony with anything”.–Kielan

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Fall Poems

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, Teaching, tagged chalkabration, fall poetry, student poems on October 9, 2015| 12 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up with Laura Purdie Salas.

Photo by Kam Abbott

The weather actually cooled off last week, so with the crispness of the air and the ending of September, we ventured out to the sidewalk to chalk fall poems.

I love to post poems that my students write. Today I celebrate a new writer in my class. Kaiden, 5th grade, joined us at the end of the year last year. (Gifted classes are revolving all year.) I love how he used the repetitive rhythm of the word fall as well as imagery about the season.

Fall
by Kaiden
Crisp brown leaves crunching under our feet
Fall
The cool breeze blowing against our faces,
Fall
The appearance of scary monsters and pumpkins,
Fall
A possible stroll through pumpkin patch,
Birds migrate south,
Fall

Vannisa, 6th grade, is back this year and adding in a little research into her fall poem. She actually looked up which meteor showers occur in the fall. I love how she wanted to connect meteor showers with fireworks.

As we Fall
by Vannisa
As we fall into winter,
the weather chills
and the leaves come down.
They fill the ground with
a fiery red
and blazing orange.

As we fall into winter,
we can no longer watch fireworks
like 4th of July,
but we can watch
the shooting stars of
Orionids and Leonids
and watch the days get shorter
until Spring comes back again.

by Emily

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Where We’re From

Posted in Poetry Friday, tagged Global Read Aloud, Kidblog, Where I'm From poem on October 2, 2015| 9 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up with Heidi at My Juicy Little Universe.

The beginning of the school year is becoming the middle of the school year. Days are passing quickly. October is already here. The promises of classroom connections are coming to life.

In order to welcome classroom connections, we created a Where I’m From poem modeled after the popular poem form by George Ella Lyon. Last week my students each wrote their own poems. This week we created a collaborative poem. I put it all together in an Animoto video.

https://animoto.com/play/c08FbbDL4Oiqv1yE34sA0A

If you are blogging with your elementary class using Kidblogs, you can connect to us here. Next week we will start blogging about Fish in a Tree, this year’s Global Read Aloud. We can’t wait! And Lynda Mullaly Hunt has promised a video a week. Read all about this event here.

Where are you from?

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Celebrating Dot Day!

Posted in Celebration Saturday, Poetry Friday, Writing, tagged International Dot Day, Peter Reynolds on September 18, 2015| 22 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up with Michelle at Today’s Little Ditty.

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

This is a dual posting for Poetry Friday and Celebration Saturday because this week we celebrated Dot Day. What a great week we had!

On Tuesday, Sept. 15th, my students have come to expect Dot Day. It’s a tradition in my gifted classroom. And every year gets better. A friend of mine made me a Dot Day skirt, a felt poodle skirt full of dots.

I received a text from a former student with the greeting, “Happy International Dot Day!” Thanks to Peter Reynolds for writing The Dot and for establishing Dot Day, a day to celebrate creativity, resilience, and empathy. Did you know there’s a Dot Day song?

We shared our enthusiasm on Wednesday with Mrs. Rogers’ first grade class. Two students shared the reading of the book and everyone danced to the song. Then the first graders decorated coffee filters with markers. I brought a spray bottle, so each gifted student sprayed their group’s dots. We had so much fun. Their teacher, Mrs. Rogers, invited us back on Friday. Her kids had made thank you drawings and wanted to perform the song for us. They had been practicing. The smile never left my face.

My kids want to do another activity with them. One suggested Chalk-a-bration. More to come!

Back in our classroom, I started a document with this line, “A blank canvas stares at me.” I invited the students to add a line to our class Dot poem. Then I put it all together in this Animoto video. I think it will make you smile!

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You be the Pencil, I’ll be the Poem

Posted in Poetry Friday, tagged Lennon & Maisy, Tabatha Yeatts on September 11, 2015| 13 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up with Robyn at Life on the Deckle Edge

You be the book, I’ll be the binding
You be the words, I’ll be the rhyming
~That’s What’s Up, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros

Last week on Poetry Friday, Tabatha posted a music video and a paired writing prompt. I thought her idea might work well with my students. We have a class blog on Kidblog.org. Each week I post what I’m calling a “Snippet of the Sea” for students to respond to. Two weeks ago the quote was from Nelson Mandella. They watched a video from the History Channel and answered hard questions about privilege and education and the word weapon. While this was a worthwhile exercise, this week I borrowed Tabatha’s idea and lightened things up a bit.

Here’s the video from Lennon and Maisy and my students’ responses. While they did not have to think very deeply, they did have to rhyme and think about how things go together. But mostly, it was just plain poetic fun.

You be the front, I’ll be the back
You be the ball, and I’ll be the bat. (Lani)

You be the pencil I’ll be the lead.
You be the blanket I’ll be the bed.
You be the butter I’ll be the bread
You be the blue I’ll be the red. (Tobie)

You be the biscuit, I’ll be the jam
You be bread, I’ll be the ham
You be the green eggs and ham, I’ll be Sam I Am.
You be the beans, I’ll be the spam
You be Mary, I’ll be the little lamb (Kielan)

You be the socks, I’ll be the shoes
You be the trumpet, I’ll be the blues (Emily)

You be the sky, I’ll be the horn fly.
You be the sun, I’ll be the fun.(Andrew)

You be the sun, I’ll be the shine.
You be the tree, I’ll be the pine. (Kaiden)

You be the dog, I’ll be the cat.
I’ll be the hair you be the hat. (Jacob)

You be the needle, I’ll be the thread.
You be the say, I’ll be the said. (Vannisa)

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Cynthia’s Garden

Posted in Poetry Friday, tagged authors, Cynthia Lord, Maine on September 4, 2015| 11 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up with Linda at Teacher Dance

Rose of Sharon photo by Cynthia Lord

I love being able to connect with authors through Twitter and Facebook. I met Cynthia Lord at NCTE last year, and she has graciously allowed me to be her friend on Facebook. The photos of her home in Maine place me there, much like her middle-grade books do. I was involved with the Summer Poem Swap this summer. I wrote this poem for a poet who lives in Maine. My visit to Maine became a walk through Cynthia’s garden.

Cynthia’s Garden

When the haze sweeps in,
I stop by Cynthia’s garden
to see the pink rose of Sharon
surprise with a bridal white.

Cynthia asks me in for tea,
a warm taste of sweet honey-orange spice.
On the center table,
sweet pea, Queen Anne’s lace, elderberry.

On the mantle, a photograph
of last winter’s snow, thick and unshoveled.
We look and sigh, knowing
this moment of surprise sweetness
is fleeting.

Her kitchen window looks out on the bay.
Colorful sails rise like kites
above crystal blue. We talk
about bunnies and blueberries
and boys who love to sleep
outside under the stars.

When the haze sweeps in,
I tell Cynthia goodbye
and hold her heart
like a poem I want to hear
again.

–Margaret Simon

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Catch Your Breath

Posted in Poetry Friday, tagged emotion poem, Laura Purdie Salas, Thanhha Lai on August 28, 2015| 19 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up with Sylvia at Poetry for Children

If you are a teacher, here is another poetry book to add to your collection. I am a big fan of Laura Purdie Salas. She has a good voice for children. This new book is small and rich. I have been doing an activity every few days or so with my students. The activities only take about 15 minutes of your writing time, and yet they build strong poetry muscles.

I recently listened to a podcast, On Being, about creativity in which the neuropsychologist Rex Jung suggests that the way to creativity is through practice. What this suggests to me as a teacher who wants creativity to stay in my curriculum is I must model the practice daily.

Laura’s book introduced my students to the author Thanhha Lai who wrote Inside Out & Back Again. I loved that book, but never thought of using it as a mentor text for writing poetry. Using a short 4-lined verse from the book, we see imagery and the craft move of showing, not telling. How can you show an emotion without using the emotion word?

I am sharing two poems today, one from Jacob (2nd grade) and one from Vannisa (6th grade). Each of these students wrote about their younger sisters using imagery to describe an emotion. We talked about how the words you use not only describe an image, but they also inform the tone (emotion).

When I re-read the pages to prepare for this post, I realized that Laura does not use the words imagery and tone in her “Your Turn” writing activity; however, through this simple poetry lesson, I can tell the students that they are practicing creative moves that writers make.

My sister’s face lights up
like a nightstand lamp.
You can tell by her eyes,
though they don’t crinkle,
that she is smiling.
Her toothless smile giggles.
My sister’s tiny smile.

–by Vannisa, 6th grade

My sister’s face lights up!

My baby sister’s face
opens up
like a confetti egg.
I appeared out of nowhere
and said, “Rahhh!”
She wants me
to do it again.

–Jacob, 2nd grade

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Your Songs are a Tribute

Posted in Poetry Friday, tagged authentic voice, Diane Mayr, mockingbird, summer poem swap on August 21, 2015| 7 Comments »

Poetry Friday round up with Catherine at Reading to the Core.

A poem gift to me from Diane Mayr begins with “Your songs are a tribute to those who/ share the neighborhood with you, but are these the songs of your heart?” These words struck a chord with me. We are singing, all of us, but are we singing the truth? Authenticity in any vocation is important, but especially true in writing. I tell my students, “I want to hear your voice when I read your writing.”

Does your voice resonate with the songs you sing?

Diane’s poem reminds us to sing about it all, the good and the bad. I want to thank my readers, my community of friends for your words of support through my sad song. I feel the love. And thanks to Diane for this special gift. I think this one will go in a frame.