Poetry Friday | Reflections on the Teche

Archive for the ‘Poetry Friday’ Category

Water Triolet

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, Teaching, tagged Poetry prompts, teaching gifted, triolet, water quotes on February 21, 2013| 12 Comments »

Sheri is hosting the round up today at her site, Sheri Doyle

In our district (in Louisiana, we call them parishes), our gifted students are spread across the parish in a dozen schools. In order to bring together our 6th grade students the year before they go to middle school together, we designed an enrichment program. The 6 elementary gifted teachers meet with all the 6th graders for one day a month to work on a specific real world project. This year our theme has been water, and I lead them in a poetry exercise each month.

This month I got the idea of using the triolet form from fellow Poetry Friday blogger, Joy at Poetry for Kids Joy. Last week, she posted a few triolet poems she wrote using quotes about writing. So I searched for quotes about water. The students’ handout included the directions for writing a triolet and a list of quotes about water. I asked them to choose a quote and use it as the first line of the poem. The best part about this exercise was I wrote with the students, and we did 5 small group rotations, so I wrote 5 triolet poems. I will only post my two favorites here.

Snow Day from Linda at Teacher Dance.

Snow Day
Someday we’ll evaporate together,
But today we’ll play in the snow.
Someday we’ll ignore the weather,
But today we’ll slip and flow.
Like two birds of the same feather,
we’ll talk and laugh and glow.
Someday we’ll evaporate together,
But today we’ll play in the snow.

–Margaret Simon, all rights reserved

Clean
Be like water, float.
Let bubbles wash you like soap.
Dance on waves, forget the boat.
Be like water, float.
Find a bottle, read the note,
Wonder, dream, imagine, hope.
Be like water, float.
Let bubbles wash you like soap.

–Margaret Simon, all rights reserved

Read Full Post »

Traveling Haiku

Posted in Poetry Friday, tagged haiku, poetry, swamp on February 15, 2013| 11 Comments »

I.
Fog lingers with mist–
highway disappears from view:
keep the low lights on.

II.
Black and white spots graze
in fertile flat fields green–
cow-friends meeting.

III.
One road to same sky–
winter trees sleep in bare branches
showing their true selves.

IV.
Turn on a new playlist–
sun illuminates sprouting
swamp grass wildflowers.

Follow me on Twitter at @MargaretGSimon

Linda at Teacher Dance is hosting Poetry Friday.

Read Full Post »

Digital Learning Day

Posted in Digital Learning, Poetry Friday, Teaching, tagged Animoto, names, Wordle on February 6, 2013| 7 Comments »

Today was National Digital Learning Day. We celebrated by making Name videos.

One of my students recently brought in a baby name book in order to select meaningful character names for a story she is writing. The students were playing around with the book looking up their own name meanings when a flash of an idea hit me. Let’s make word clouds and videos about our names! So we headed to the library so that each child could have a computer to use.

Wordle made by Kaylie

We used two websites: Wordle and Animoto.
First they made the Wordle. We took a screen shot of it and pasted it into Paint. There we saved the file as a JPEG.

On Animoto, students can make a 30 second video for free. The trouble I ran into at one of my schools was the Flash player wasn’t updated. Our good ole librarian came to the rescue and helped us update. To allow students to have an account on Animoto, the student used my gmail account by adding a plus sign and then their own name. That way I get the email about the video they created and they get free use of the site.

I will share two name videos with you. One was made using PowerPoint.

Open

And another used Animoto:

Vannisa's One of a kind Name.

Tara at A Teaching Life is hosting Poetry Friday.

Read Full Post »

Idiom Poems

Posted in Poetry Friday, tagged Chris Van Allsburg, Harris Burdick, idioms on February 1, 2013| 9 Comments »

April at Teaching Authors is hosting today.

This week I introduced the new book, The Chronicles of Harris Burdick, to my students. The Mysteries of Harris Burdick was first published in 1984 by Chris Van Allsburg. The book included black and white illustrations with only a title and a caption. The story was up to your own imagination. The illustrations have been used as writing prompts for years. The new book features stories written by well-known middle grade writers. Or, as Lemony Snicket would like us to believe, they were all written secretly by Harris Burdick himself. Whatever you believe, the book is a magical collection of model stories.

We read together a story written by Jon Scieszka, “Under the Rug.” In this story, the narrator’s grandmother speaks in idioms. We all laughed together at Grandma, “All that glitters is not gold. Beware the calm before the storm. Those pants make you look fat.” After our discussion, I asked the students to select their favorite idiom and write about it. I wish you could hear the playful sibling rivalry in Brooklyn’s voice when she read her poem, “Back Seat Driver.”

Bossy, bossy
Coach, coach
Telling me what to do
Move over here,
Go over there
He might just get hit with a shoe.

Such a backseat driver,
If I do say so myself,
Only a big brother thing
I wonder if his head goes ding
Whenever something falls from above
like a 2×4 shelf.

Read Full Post »

Fair Play

Posted in Poetry Friday, Teaching, tagged fairy tales, Poetry prompts, The Time is Now on January 25, 2013| 7 Comments »

Tabatha at The Opposite of Indifference is hosting today.

I subscribe to Poets and Writers The Time is Now writing prompts. This week the poetry prompt intrigued me.

“Choose any word from the dictionary and read its definitions. Write a poem using only the language of these definitions. Try repeating them in different combinations and using line break to create unexpected phrases. Experiment with how far you can push the limits of the language you’re working with. Use the word you’ve chosen as the title of the poem.”

I tried the exercise myself with varied results. I tried it with my elementary gifted students. At first I was worried. It took a while for them to even choose a word. My favorite came from a third grader. I’m not sure how much of the original definition became a part of her poem, but I loved her play with language.

Fair

People say you’re the fairest of them all.
Of course they say that in fairy tales,
you know,
when a fairy comes to help the fair lady.
She’s not that fair.
She is wicked. She is cruel.
The real fairest of them all
comes to help, to defeat
that so-called fair queen.
That’s why they say
you’re only fair
in fairy tales.

–Vannisa

Read Full Post »

The Star Still Leads

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, tagged ekphrasis, Epiphany, John Gibson on January 18, 2013| 12 Comments »

Artwork by John Gibson

I attend the Episcopal Church of the Epiphany, so Sunday, Jan. 6th was our feast day. For the occassion, Bishop Jake Owensby visited and preached at the service. He talked about how the wise men were not searching for a certain geographical location, but for a person. His whole sermon can be found on his blog, Pelican Anglican.

I was inspired by Bishop Jake’s words when I picked up this card from my collection. I tried to capture the idea of our continual search in this poem.

The Star Still Leads
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

Wise men traveled a great distance
with a will
strong enough to carry them
over hills and dunes,
through nights of wind,
storms, and cold.
All in search of a person.

Life is a destination
recorded in scrapbooks
dated photographs,
no east, south,
west, or north,
but names, people we love,
people who sustain us in hope.

We are revealed to God,
our calloused hands curled
in prayer,
we reach up,
fervently asking
for relationship, for health, for understanding.
Asking for a star.

all rights reserved, Margaret Simon

Violet is hosting the round-up today. Check it out!

Read Full Post »

Mr. Al

Posted in Poetry Friday, tagged found poem, Mr. Al oak tree on January 10, 2013| 5 Comments »

Renee is hosting Poetry Friday today.

A found poem is a form of poetry using existing text and fashioning it into a poem. My students enjoy this kind of poetry because it seems easy; Just find some golden lines, put them together, and voilà, a poem!
“Poems hide in things you and others say and write. They lie buried in places where language isn’t so self-conscious as ‘real poetry’ often is. [Writing found poems] is about keeping your ears and eyes alert to the possibilities in ordinary language” (Dunning and Stafford, Getting the Knack: 20 Poetry Exercises.) For a complete lesson on Found Poetry, go to Read, Write, Think.

Watercolor painting of Mr. Al by Jerome Weber

In May of 2011, an old oak tree was saved by a group of community members. At the time, I involved my students in writing letters to save the tree. It was moved with much effort and at a high cost. I pass this tree every day as I drive to school. A friend of mine is the arborist hired to care for Mr. Al. On Tuesday, the newspaper had an update on Mr. Al’s health. The title of the article was “Looking a Little Thin but OK, Mr. Al weathering it all.”

Weather forecasters predict severe storms.
One resident is not concerned.
Mr. Al, 120 years old,
is setting down roots
in his new home.

Weighing 800,000 pounds,
such a move can put significant
strain on his magnitude,
a pretty mean way to treat an old tree.

The stately oak looks thin
but this is normal for his type.
He’s catching up.

Come and sit by my roots,
invites Mr. Al,
and think the things that
an old guy thinks.
–Margaret Simon, all rights reserved

Read Full Post »

Dance of the Trees

Posted in Poetry Friday, tagged blues, Christmas cards, John Gibson, poetry on January 4, 2013| 10 Comments »

Artwork by John Gibson, 2011

When I was growing up, I would watch my father draw. He loves to draw trees. And somehow, he sees more about trees than I see. I think an artist must see more than we see. He makes the trees come alive on the page.

As I work on my poetry project about my father’s art, I remember growing up in Mississippi on the banks of Purple Creek, playing in the woods, building forts and pretending to live in the wild frontier like Laura Ingalls Wilder. I remember hiking with a friend and choosing “our” own tree.

So I was thinking all these things, trees in art, growing up in Mississippi, and working on the craft of poetry when I came across a blues poem by Etheridge Knight that inspired a rhythm in me.

A Poem for Myself
I was born in Mississippi;
I walked barefooted thru the mud.
Born black in Mississippi,
walked barefoot through the mud…

This is my favorite poem that I have written so far. Sometimes you work on a poem over and over, and sometimes they just come. This one came, and I am grateful to my Creator for giving it to me.

Dance of the Trees
—Look at trees, think of God who comes to bring love.
I watch you watching trees.
I watch you watching those trees
outside your window in the loft.
If you could walk on the roof,
If you could walk out on that roof and touch them,
You could feel their hearts beating,
their hearts beating out the rhythm of the wind.
I watch you drawing the trees.
I watch you drawing those trees
in perfect chiaroscuro, shading just so
Just so they come alive and dance.
The trees dance in the moonlight
when you draw them.
When you draw them, God’s hand moves.
God’s hand is moving.

Matt is hosting Poetry Friday today.

Read Full Post »

Listen

Posted in Poetry Friday, tagged Christmas cards, John Gibson, poetry on December 28, 2012| 4 Comments »

Carol is hosting Poetry Friday today. Check it out.

Art work by John Gibson, 2006

Last week on Poetry Friday, Laura Purdi Salas wrote a triolet about icicles. Her poem inspired me to try the triolet form. I am working on writing poems to my father’s Christmas cards. Here is a triolet for his 2006 card. The epigraph is his greeting inside the card.

Listen

Listen for the music of angels

Songs of heaven come to you
in mourning tunes of doves.
An angel plays her trumpet; true
Songs of heaven come to you.
From towers, hear a cathedral tune
echo like a hymn one loves.
Songs of heaven come to you
in mourning tunes of doves.

—Margaret Simon, all rights reserved

Read Full Post »