Poetry Friday | Reflections on the Teche

Archive for the ‘Poetry Friday’ Category

Why Poetry?

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, Writing, tagged Chris Lehman, I am From, Kevin Hodgson, poetry, TeacherPoets on April 11, 2014| 10 Comments »

Poetry Friday Round-up is at Today’s Little Ditty.

For National Poetry Month, Chris Lehman has invited teacher/poets to join together to read, listen, and discuss poetry. Chris posed this question to the group, “Why Poetry?” Inspired by Kevin Hodgson, I tried out Tapestry for my response. Click on the link to view my response.

https://readtapestry.com/s/6Bs7sVEW7/

Earlier in the week, I posted about my writing life responding to fellow blogger/writer Sandra Sarr’s questions. I am From poems have been around for a while and are written in many middle grade classrooms. But I wanted to take a different spin on the I am From and write about where my writing life comes from.

I am from a short story contest in tenth grade.
I won for my row.

I am from Dear Diary, “I want to be a writer
if only someone would give me the confidence.”

I am from “Where is Papa going with that ax?”
to “Blue is cackling something awful this morning.”
from Children’s Literature class to
the National Writing Project Teacher Institute.

I am from retreats, marathons, and critique groups
holding me accountable to find an authentic voice
and make writing a daily practice.

I am from pen to paper,
fingers to keyboard,
opening my veins and bleeding
my words,
trusting them to
the world.

–Margaret Simon, all rights reserved

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C is for Collaboration

Posted in Poetry Friday, Teaching, Writing, tagged couplet, haiku, Kevin Hodgson, line lifting, Michelle Haseltine, notegraphy on April 4, 2014| 12 Comments »

Poetry Friday Round-up is at The Poem Farm.

Some days don’t go as planned. As you know, I am trying to do a poem a day using ABCs of styles, forms, and techniques. For Day 3, letter C, we got so wrapped up in book talks that we had little time left for writing.

As we reviewed the results of Round 4 on MMPoetry, we found the words for the final round. Incontinent, kerfuffle, confabulation, and defenestrate. After discussion, collaboration led to a haiku using the word defenestration. I showed my students this new app I learned about from Kevin Hodgson and Michelle Haseltine, Notegraphy. It works well for a collaborative haiku.

The line lifter lurked on my students’ blogs and left some cool response poems. The kids were so excited that their poems had been hacked! Thanks, Kevin.

Me –
the mold on the wall,
sticks to you like thoughts in your head
that you can’t ever shake loose
or clean with a swipe
or maybe I am more like a poem
that one shares on the Web
which then whispers melodies of meaning in your ear
all day.

– Mr. Hodgson
Sixth Grade Teacher
Norris Elementary School
aka, the line lifter
🙂

Kaylie stopped by our class blog and saw no poems using the letter C. That didn’t stop her from contributing. She wrote a beautiful couplet about pelicans.

The pelican flies out towards dawn
Past the orange sunrise and so on

They travel in pairs across the sky
When the bayou has gone bone dry

They long for the feel of the wet on their feathers
The bayou is where their hearts are tethered

The pelican flies out towards dawn
Past the orange sunrise… on and on and on…
–Kaylie, all rights reserved

Please click on over to Caroline Starr Rose’s blog where I am the guest writer. My post is more about anaphora.

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Writing Bad Poetry like Billy Collins

Posted in Poetry Friday, Teaching, Writing, tagged ABCs of poetry, bad poetry, Billy Collins on April 3, 2014| 5 Comments »

I am convinced that writing poetry is a gift from God. The magical words that float around my classroom amaze me.

I am also the mellifluous sound of a pencil writing on paper.
–Kendall

I know the title is confusing. Bad poetry? From Billy Collins? If you do not know the poem Litany by Billy Collins, then you must go to these sites and read or listen to it. Bet you can’t keep a straight face. In print on Poem Hunter.

Recited by a 3 year old on YouTube:

And…Billy Collins himself:

I explained to my students that Billy Collin’s poem was so bad it was good. They got that. Having primed them with this poem, I let them loose to borrow the structure, think outside the box, and create wildly creative metaphors. I was amazed by the results and would love to share them all. You can read them on our class blog: Slice of Life Challenge at kidblog.org.
The lurking line lifter struck in the wee hours of the morning, so read the comments, too.

I am excited about the poem I caught on this fishing trip. I was thinking about how writing poems together connects us.

Our Ship

We are all on this ship together
whether or not it sails.
We are side by side like the freckles on your mother’s face.
We are closer than the love bugs on the windshield.
You, and I, and he, and she.
We are not like the blown away balloons
at the 3 year old’s birthday party.
We are not the shavings of wood mulching the flower bed.
No, we are this way, that way,
you know what I mean,
intertwined like the vines of wisteria,
joined and connected, tumbling and reaching.
Give me your hand.
I will give you mine.
Let’s go on this voyage together.

–Margaret Simon, all rights reserved.

Vannisa wins the prize of being published on this blog with her poem. She just looked around the classroom and found metaphors galore.

Everything in the Classroom

You can be the air that comes through the vent
You can be the memory I regret
You can be the board I write messages to
You can be the painting that just sits
You can be the pencil sharpener, only useful when needed

As for I,
I could be the mechanical pencil that doesn’t need you
I could be the clip that makes you sit
I could be the eraser that deletes your notes
I could be the person who creates you, the memory I regret
I could be the thermostat, who shuts you down

–Vannisa, all rights reserved

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March Madness Poetry

Posted in Poetry Friday, Slice of Life, Teaching, tagged gifted education, MMPoetry, Think Kid Think, vocabulary on March 28, 2014| 19 Comments »

Slice of Life Day 28. Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.

Join the Poetry Friday round-up at A Year of Reading.

I signed up my morning ELA group for voting on the March Madness Poetry going on at Think, Kid, Think! The poetry rounds are open to public voting, but this year Ed DeCaria invited students to participate. I jumped in with both feet not knowing what I was getting into.

We missed the first voting round because I was dealing with getting the site unblocked from our school network. While the technology department is usually very accommodating, it took a few back and forth emails to accomplish this. The site was all ready for Monday morning’s round 2.

My students knew nothing about this, and frankly, I hadn’t prepared myself much either, so Monday was not the best day to hit them with new words like ersatz and mellifluous. For each match-up, Ed selects a random word. The author has 36 hours to write a poem with his/her given word. Some of these words were new to me, not to mention new to my students. So with the wonders of the Internet and Google, we entered each word, read the definition, discussed it, then went back to the poems. I read them aloud and asked for a show of hands. For each poem, the voters had to make a case for the one they chose. This created an impromptu discussion of technique, and I discovered that the poems I thought were the best crafted work did not always appeal to the students.

For example, they selected Karyn Linnell’s poem “Mellifluous” over Kathy Ellen Davis’s one using the word “Hiatus.”
“Despite all her welts, Mellifluous sang; this golden voice was now her own./
And to this day a mellifluous sound is one with a smooth and sweet tone.”
They enjoyed the storytelling way this poem worked and how, like some myths, it explained a word. One of my students compared it to the myth of Echo.

Later in the week, we checked the results. Once again we were discussing words and poetry. How cool is that? I asked my students to select one of the words to use in their own poem. This activity happened on “Day without your Desk” so they were strewn all over the floor with pillows and blankets, a great way to write poetry. Vannisa, 4th grade, chimed in about how she was on hiatus from her desk. She loved saying this new word. Here is her poem.

A hiatus for you
A hiatus for me
A hiatus for us

We all need breaks

Too much information
To stuff in our heads

We need a vacation
To a special destination

What’s that place called?

Oh yeah that’s right
Imagination

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Big Words

Posted in Poetry Friday, Slice of Life, Teaching, Writing, tagged poetry, Slice of Life Challenge, strong words on March 21, 2014| 10 Comments »

Slice of Life Day 21. Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.

Poetry Friday Round-up is at The Drift Record

I am constantly amazed by my gifted students. They can process and learn at such a rapid rate. I love words. That’s no secret. They know it. So we often spend time talking about words.

Vannisa, a 4th grader, and I are reading A Snicker of Magic together. (Actually, she has passed me up.) I asked her to put some of the magical words on the board. She made a list including felicity, serendipity, paradigm, gargantuan, spendiddly, snicker-doodle, lickety-split. Aren’t these great words?

I pulled up a poem that Katie Muhtaris posted on her blog Coffee Fueled Musings to show her students how to use strong verbs. Her poem, Oreos, inspired Vannisa to write about cookies.

Chewy Cookies

Stretching for the red box it slumbers in,
peel off the wrapper
decant a glass of milk into the tall transparent cup.
Let the flow of white water dive into the pool of air.
Snatch a crispy golden cookie.
Devour the serendipity.
Taste the felicity of the snicker-doodle.

–Vannisa, age 10

Matthew, otherwise known as Magic Matt on our class blog, took a break from his magic tricks to write a poem. He didn’t know it was good. He told me, “Don’t post this anyWHERE.” Then I read it and said, “Wow!”

Matt said, “Mrs. Simon, did you just say Wow about one of my poems?”

I think you will say Wow! too.

Felicity

Felicity fills my soul,
warming my heart like a gargantuan fire.
Isolated mountains dot the Earth
like looking through a kaleidoscope.
A paradigm of God’s grandest creation meeting reality.

–Matthew, age 10

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Mother Nature

Posted in Poetry Friday, Slice of Life, Writing, tagged gifted education, lift a line, poetry on March 14, 2014| 10 Comments »

Slice of Life Day 14. Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.

Join the Poetry Friday Round up at Rogue Anthropologist

Today, I am featuring a new and upcoming poet, Kaylie. She was my student for 3 years. This year she is in middle school, but she has joined the class as we participate in the Slice of Life Story Classroom Challenge. Her mother teaches across the hall from me. She came in one day earlier this week and said, “Thank you.” She told me that Kaylie has not been writing much at school this year, and she forgot how much she loves it. She now comes home every day and goes straight to the computer to write her Slice of the day. Kaylie is a poet. She has an amazing sense of language for her 13 years.

Now she has returned in spirit as a leader to the others. She is lifting lines and writing poems. In her slice yesterday, she wrote, “I don’t know why I am ADDICTED to writing lift a lines. I guess this is just a great way to make someone else feel good because you like their writing.” Kevin Hodgson has started something. He stopped by yesterday and left a poem response. And, yes, as Kaylie said, “It made me feel good.”

Wordle made by Kaylie

Her feelings come and go
As quickly as leaves fall
In the brisk autumn months.
Her spirit will always be with the earth.

If you are quiet, you can hear her heart thumping, thumping,
Dancing to the beat of the cicada song,
Steady and slow, on time
You can see her eyes, the stars

That glitter in the twilight,
Inconsistent as the moon.
She is restless,
In the ocean that crashes toward shore,

Always there, always churning
To the gull’s cry, to the burning sand,
She is present.

In the winter, her heart is cold as ice
Her heart thumps slow, quiet, soft
The snow falls, her whispers
Her secrets that we catch on our tongue
Only to be melted away.

In the spring, she is generous.
It is a time for life and rebirth,
She lets her children frolic among the daisies
In the sweet breeze she blows.
She is everywhere, she is invisible.
She is the Earth.

–Kaylie

See more of my students’ Slice of Life writing (Maybe even steal a line.): http://kidblog.org/SliceofLifeChallenge/

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Celebrating Comments

Posted in Celebration Saturday, Gratitude, Poetry Friday, Slice of Life, Teaching, tagged comments, dancing, poets, Slice of Life, teachers, writing on March 8, 2014| 7 Comments »

Slice of Life Day 8. Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.

Celebration Saturday is hosted each week by Ruth Ayres at Discover. Play. Build. I love this idea of taking time each Saturday morning to reflect on the week. Today I celebrate family, health, dancing, Poetry Friday and my students.

I have been writing a post every day for the Two Writing Teachers (really 6 writing teachers) Slice of Life Challenge. I have challenged my students to do the same. We were out of school for the first 5 days of March, so I was pleasantly surprised when some of my students posted every day. And one of my former students has joined us as well! See their blog Slice of Life Challenge.

Yesterday, I gave my students a comment challenge. At first, I told them they should give as many comments as they get. Then I grabbed a bag of Starburst candy and said, “How many comments can you do in an hour?” One student put a tally chart on the board, and they were off. Two of my girls went to the library for more computer access and quiet. The average was 10 comments per student. By the end of the day, my eight ELA students had written more than 120 comments! And I checked them. Most of them were making a thoughtful connection. It remains to be seen whether they will keep up the pace next week without the candy incentive.

I want to celebrate health. I was down for two days this week with a nasty cold. Luckily, we had a break from school. I was able to pamper myself with lots of tea and rest, so on Thursday morning when I had to go back to school, I was well. Energy returned on Friday. My husband and I went Zydeco dancing Friday night to Chubby Carrier and the Bayou Swamp Band.

If you didn’t stop by for the Poetry Friday round up yesterday, please take a look. So much richness in this Kidlit blog-a-sphere. I celebrate all of the wonderful teachers and poets who linked up and left comments. I feel the love!

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The Line Lifter

Posted in Poetry Friday, Slice of Life, Writing, tagged Dogtrax, Kevin Hodgson, lift a line poetry, Slice of Life Challenge on March 7, 2014| 42 Comments »

Poetry Friday Round-up is Here!

Slice of Life Day 7. Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.

Slice of Life Day 6. Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.

Watch out! There is a line lifter lurking in the cybersphere. He goes by the odd name of Dogtrax. He’s been reading poems and stealing lines and writing poems of his own. He also went so far as to make a Prezi for his class, as if this is a practice they may want to emulate.

I have to say, in all honesty, that this practice is the highest form of praise for a beginning student writer. My student, Vannesa wrote a poem posted on my blog here. Kevin, aka Dogtrax, wrote this poem in response.

Who comes from words
I come from words
and you come from the punctuation
at the end of my words
where we can both pause for a second
to think about what I meant to say
when I was writing words
and you were reading them.

-Kevin

Just a few days ago, my former student, Kaylie, joined our class Slice Of Life Challenge blog and posted this fabulous poem inspired by my mother-in-law’s visit last year. Kevin strikes again.

The sun climbs the earth again
feet dragging along the hillsides of my youth
and I wave farewell to the moon and the stars
and the constellations that were stories of my dreams
in order to embrace the warmth of the sun
and welcome the day.

–Mr. Hodgson
Sixth Grade Teacher
Southampton, Massachusetts USA

I find Kevin’s practices on the Internet inspiring. He posted a Haiku Deck poem recently, so I tried my hand at it also. WordPress is not supporting the embed code, so I made the slides into images to post here. This is a haiku version of a poem I wrote for Laura Shovan’s Pantone Poetry Project on Author Amok. (Today is her last day, so sad. It’s been a fun month.)

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app

Today is Poetry Friday and I am celebrating my 300th post! (Throws confetti!) The round-up will be gathered my Mr. Linky. Please come back often to read and comment. As one of my students said today, “Comments are fluffy!”

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Colors Chalkabration

Posted in Chalk-a-bration, Poetry Friday, Writing, tagged Author Amok, Betsy Hubbard, chalk poetry, chalkabration, Laura Shovan, Pantone colors on February 28, 2014| 12 Comments »

Find more poetry at the Poetry Friday Roundup hosted by Anastasia.

Join the Chalk-a-bration over at Teaching Young Writers

For February, my students and I braved the cold temperatures to chalk some poetry on the sidewalks. The prompt came from Laura Shovan’s month long birthday project with Pantone colors. I have been participating along with my poet friends Linda Baie and Diane Mayr. Head over to Laura’s site, Author Amok, to read some great poetry.

I bought a new box of chalk and the pieces were labeled with interesting color names. Brooklyn picked out Sky Blue:

The sky shines sky blue
The way the summer pool invites me
The way blueberries taste
The way hydrangeas take your breath away
The sky shines sky blue

–Brooklyn.

Vannisa wants you to imagine the colors and how one becomes another in her list.

I selected the colors sunflower and golden glow to add a little sunshine to the day.

We will be on break for the Mardi Gras holiday next week, so my students got a jumpstart on the Slice of Life Challenge. Consider stopping in and leaving a comment on our public blog site: http://kidblog.org/SliceofLifeChallenge/

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Wishes on Wood

Posted in Poetry Friday, Writing, tagged love poetry, maple wood table, Naomi Shihab Nye on February 21, 2014| 7 Comments »

Find more poetry at the Poetry Friday Roundup hosted by Karen Edmisten.

Creative Commons, flickr, by photosteve101

Toady is my husband’s birthday. Exactly one week from Valentine’s Day. Last week I posted a love poem. This week I am contemplating the table he made for our family meals. This poem is after Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem “The Comfort of Wood.”

Wishes on Wood
For Jeff

after Naomi Shihab Nye
The Comfort of Wood

I come to this table hungry
I come empty as a vase
waiting for the scent of blossoms.

I come with no plan;
time stops.
I listen for the birds to return.

He built this table
of soft blonde maple.
If you ask, he’ll show you the joints.

The table centers the room,
colored chairs I painted with spray;
the green one could use a fresh coat.

Now I am learning the strength
of this wood, like a family,
holds all our whispered wishes.

–Margaret Simon, all rights reserved