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DigiLit Sunday: Poem Movies

Posted in Digital Learning, Gifted Education, Poetry, Poetry Friday, Teaching, Writing, tagged Animoto, autumn leaves, Nature poems, student writing on October 19, 2014| 8 Comments »

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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.

Add in your own Digital Literacy links here:

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Murmuration Mysteries

Posted in Gifted Education, Poetry, Poetry Friday, Teaching, Writing, tagged starling murmurations, student poetry, zeno poems on October 17, 2014| 11 Comments »

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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Zeno-mania

Posted in Gifted Education, Poetry, Poetry Friday, Teaching, Writing, tagged Emaze, J. Patrick Lewis, zeno poems on October 10, 2014| 16 Comments »

Find more Poetry Friday at Miss Rumphius Effect.

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.

http://app.emaze.com/882076/zeno-poetry

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Cloud Watching

Posted in Gifted Education, Poetry, Poetry Friday, Teaching, Writing, tagged acrostic poetry, cloud poems, Poetry Friday Anthologies on October 3, 2014| 16 Comments »

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.

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Rose: An Acrostic Poem

Posted in Gifted Education, Poetry, Poetry Friday, Writing, tagged acrostic poetry, student poem on September 26, 2014| 20 Comments »

Laura Purdie Salas is hosting today’s round up.

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.

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Summer Serenity

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, tagged Carol Varsalona, poetry, summer serenity gallery on September 19, 2014| 16 Comments »

Amy at The Poem Farm is hosting today.

Poetry heals. Yesterday I posted about my student whose mother died. Amy (who is our awesome hostess today) sent a comment with a poetry resource for healing, The Place I Know: Poems of Comfort, compiled by Georgia Heard. I ordered it for a mere penny on Amazon, a collection of poems for grieving children. Thanks, Amy, for the recommendation and for your kindness and for hosting Poetry Friday today.

Making connections online can be inspiring. Carol Varsalona posted a call for poetry submissions for a Summer Serenity Gallery on her site. The post is up, and I am humbled to have a poem in this wonderful collection. Carol put in hours of work. Please head over and back again and again to feel the gentle memory of summer serenity.

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14 Cows and 9/11

Posted in Gifted Education, Poetry, Poetry Friday, Teaching, Writing, tagged 14 Cows for America, diamante poems, Sept. 11th on September 12, 2014| 5 Comments »

Renee at No Water River is hosting the round up today. Click here to join in.

In the past I have avoided the subject of the tragic Sept. 11th with my young elementary students. Yesterday, fellow blogger Holly Mueller posted about using the book 14 Cows for America to teach empathy on Sept. 11th. So I looked in our school library first thing in the morning, and she had the book. I took it as a sign. There was also an accompanying YouTube video about the story of the 14 Cows. I showed the video and read the book aloud. I have to admit I was fighting back tears the whole time. This day affects me deeply as I am sure it does many of you.

Following the read aloud, I asked my students to write for a few minutes. I was amazed by the profound nature of their writing. They can all be found on our class kidblog, but I wanted to share a few.

Point of View

Looking at a plane,

directly in front of you,

coming closer, closer, closer,

finally, you run. But you’re too late.

It has already hit. Shards of glass graze your skin,

you’re blinded by dust. Finally, you’re out.

You wipe your eyes and see…nothing.

Fire, smoke, and debris are where you just were.

The other tower, just south of the first, is hit.

The first collapses, and you know anyone inside is gone.

–Matthew

Cows are the grass that sways.
Cows are the roads we drive on.
Cows are the great buildings standing tall.
Cows are the stars in the sky.
Cows are life.

–Vannisa

Hope

passion,desperate

loving,wishing,believing

It is in you.

Wonder.

–Tyler

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Dialogue Poem

Posted in Poetry Friday, Teaching, Writing, tagged dialogue poem, Kim Douillard, photography on September 5, 2014| 10 Comments »

Laura at Author Amok has the Poetry Friday round up today.

I enjoy good photography. I also think photos make good prompts for writing. Kim Douillard posted two photos from the beach on her site “Thinking through my Lens.” They were taken minutes apart, and during that small space of time, the sun set and turned the sky orange. She asked her blog audience what the two photographs may be saying to each other. I posted them side by side on the board in the classroom and suggested students write a conversation or dialogue poem. I imagined the following conversation.

photo by Kim Douillard, all rights reserved.

The Hang Glider Speaks to the Sandpiper
A lone sandpiper
steps into the clouds,
reflected sky on serous sand.
I hear the echo of his call,
“Come wade with me.
The sand is cool
between your toes.
Come take a walk with me.”

A lone hang glider
flies in the sunset,
warm rays guide him on.
The silence of the sky speaks,
“Up here, where the air is thin and light,
you can fly like a kite–free–
Come up here with me.”
–Margaret Simon, all rights reserved.

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Thumbprint

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, Teaching, tagged Eve Merriam, fingerprints, Wonderopolis on August 29, 2014| 13 Comments »

Join the Poetry Friday Round-up.

My favorite librarian, Jone, has the round up today at Check it Out. Go check it out!

Inspired by a post from Linda Baie (who blogs at Teacher Dance) about using Eve Merriam’s poem Thumbprint at the beginning of the school year, I designed this week’s Wonder around fingerprints. We read this article on Wonderopolis. I asked students to select four vocabulary words from the Wonder Words. Then we watched this Prezi about annotating Eve Merriam’s Thumbprint. Then using the chosen words, we wrote our own poems. I also passes around an ink pad so my students could place their thumbprint on the journal page. I taught this lesson twice during the day to two groups of students, so I had the added advantage of writing two poems. Here’s mine.

Fingerprint

I own
a God-given design,
uniquely mine,
a painting of swirls
and whorls
imprinting me
on this page.
I own
an invisible touch,
a latent path
left on a note
from me to you,
this fingerkiss.

–Margaret Simon, all rights reserved

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Ode to the Cicada

Posted in Poetry Friday, Writing, tagged cicadas, clouds, Guadalupe Garcia McCall, Heidi Mordhorst, insects, nature poetry, Wonderopolis on August 22, 2014| 24 Comments »

Join the Poetry Friday Round-up at Life on the Deckle Edge with Robyn Hood Black.

Due to Robyn’s shoulder injury (Get well quick, Robyn.), Irene Latham has taken on the roundup today at Live your Poem.

“Cicada molting animated-2” by T. Nathan Mundhenk – Edited version of File:Cicada molting animated.gif. Licensed under CC BY 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons.

Taken by T. Nathan Mundhenk, in Centerville, Ohio USA July 30 2007. Each frame taken at 1 minute intervals. 30 minute gap in middle while cicada rested. The Cicada takes about 2 hours to complete the process.

This week was my first week back with my students. We read about bioluminescence of fireflies on Wonderopolis. This got me thinking about another insect, one that is loud at this time of year, the cicada. We read together two poems from The Poetry Friday Anthology of Science, Cicada Magic by Heidi Mordhorst and Cicada by Guadalupe Garcia McCall. We discussed the literary elements of imagery, rhyme, and personification. Then we wrote our own Cicada poems. Mine came out as an ode. One student’s response, “You’ve gotta love an ode!”

Ode to the Cicada

Your buzzy song rises
with the temperature.
Heat fans your wings
that saw the air
with sound.
You shed your exoskeleton
like a chrysalis
emerging larger and uglier
leaving behind a prize,
an ornament hanging on a tree,
a bronze clasp pen for my lapel.
Oh, cicada,
the memory of happy summer days
waiting, wondering,
whispering in wind’s ear
your creaky violin.
–Margaret Simon, all rigths reserved