Teaching | Reflections on the Teche

Archive for the ‘Teaching’ Category

Slice of Life: What the Tree Knows

Posted in Poetry, Slice of Life, Teaching, Writing, tagged #poemsofpresence, Georgia Heard, wisdom poems on June 3, 2025| 4 Comments »

Once again, Georgia Heard’s newsletter delivers a wealth of prompts for writing. On Sundays I tutor a young writer. She is such a delight. This week she was eating cherries from her own cherry tree. I knew we had to include this in her poem, so I turned to Georgia’s poem “What the Trees Know.”

When writing poetry from the heart, you must turn to what you know. Amoret knows cherry trees. As I wrote beside her, I wrote about cypress trees. What tree would you write about?

I am pleased to share Amoret’s poem today. Her writing fills me with poetic-teacher joy. She has few inhibitions about putting words to paper and was happy for me to share her poem.

What Does the Cherry Tree Know?

A cherry tree knows how
To dance in the wind freely
And joyfully. The cherry tree knows
How to drink from its
Roots. To us, how it drinks
May seem fast, but to the tree
It’s like a walk in the
Park. The cherry tree
Gets showered by a hose
Rarely, but mostly the
Rain. When we say “Oh no,
It’s a-raining!” cherries are
Showering and drinking.

By Amoret, 9 years old

Read Full Post »

Poetry Friday: Retire is a Bold Word

Posted in Teaching, Writing, tagged double dactyl, Etheree, Ethical ELA, retire on April 25, 2025| 22 Comments »

Heidi Mordhorst is hosting Poetry Friday at My Juicy Little Universe and she also has the next line for the Kidlit Progressive Poem.

This week we are back from Easter break and in the depths of standardized testing, so it has become an opportunity for me to start the daunting task of cleaning out my classroom for retirement. I’ve been looking through old files and deciding what to keep and what to trash. Most of it is trash, but I look at it anyway. There are some things that are hard to throw away. It’s hitting me hard, I must say. So for two of the poem prompts at Ethical ELA, I wrote about this process. Writing is the way I can let go of some of the pent up feelings. (I don’t want to show them to my students.)

Larin Wade gave the prompt on Wednesday. Ironically she is a first year teacher. She asked us to write about seasons using the etheree form (consists of ten lines of increasing syllable count: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. 10)

Time
reflects
a long life
of commitment
not only to teach
but to nurture children
hold them with loving kindness
allow a safe space for growing.
Retire is a bold, yet daunting word.
One door closes. Will another open?

On Friday, Ashley challenged us with double dactyls. To see the rules (guidelines) for this poem, go to her post here.

Higgledy-piggledy
Filefuls of gibberish
Fill up her trash bin with
Piles of old news

Secretly covering
Years of her mothering
Spilling soft mutterings
long overdue.

And now back to the task at hand. Happy Friday! Four Fridays to go!

I made this collage years ago in a paper workshop.

Read Full Post »

Slice of Life Day 29: After Billy Collins

Posted in Gifted Education, Poetry, Slice of Life, Teaching, Writing, tagged Billy Collins, student poems, teaching poetry, Today on March 29, 2025| 6 Comments »

Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.

On Fridays, I usually post a poem for my students to read and discuss. This week we looked at Billy Collins’s poem Today. This has been a favorite of mine for a long time. When I looked back on my blog, I found a poem I wrote after Today in 2011. (See the post here.) My students were shocked by this because none of them were even born at that time.

Today begins with a wonderful line for getting into a poem, “If ever there were a spring day so perfect,” As the poem continues with two lined stanzas, there is no end punctuation until the last line, “today is just that kind of day.” The whole poem is one sentence. I love how this works to make the poem sound more urgent and energized.

I invited my students to use these lines to create their own poems about a perfect day.

Spring 2025
after Billy Collins

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so full of bird song

that it made you want to join
with your own singing

and open your whole mouth
to the world of nature,

a day when dew drops cool grass,
and the garden roses popping

with red reflect the sun, so much light
that you feel like breathing,

releasing the grief you’ve held in
and cry real tears at the beauty

of it all, walk with light
pink and orange rising before

you, welcoming you with open arms
of rose and green and sky.

Today is that kind of day.

Margaret Simon, draft

As we head into spring, Avalyn and some other students are still dreaming about the amazing snow we had this winter. She asked if she could write about a winter day. “Of course, it’s your poem.”

If there were a winter day so perfect
so cold with icy air

Could I pretend to hunt ghosts
while drinking a warm cup of hot chocolate

Could I put on layers of clothes
and roll in the snow

Could I sit in my warm bed
watching TV and “being productive”

Could I play outside bands
performing plays

Could I read a book
my best days

Dreaming of presents can you imagine?
Well you can because today is that day.

Avalyn, 5th grade

Read Full Post »

Slice of Life Day 28: Poetry Friday: Revision

Posted in Gifted Education, Poetry, Poetry Friday, Progressive poem, Slice of Life, Teaching, Writing, tagged Fanschool, revision, student poems, triolet on March 28, 2025| 15 Comments »

If you are a blogger and would like to add a line during National Poetry Month to our Kidlit Progressive Poem, please make a comment or send me an email with a date choice and a link to your blog. Everyone is welcome to play!

The early morning school playground was covered in a sheet of fog. Avalyn and I went outside to write. This is something she often requests. There is an old oak with a picnic table in a just right spot for writing in our notebooks. I wrote about my surroundings, observations of the morning.

The fog hovers over the playground.
I hear echoes of a church bell chime.
Traffic moves beyond
carrying the day-workers.
Birds call to mates
as spring slowly wakes
sprouting on this weary morning.

Form can give us a container for our words. I looked up the triolet form. I labeled my paper with the number of lines and the rhyme scheme. The poem changed shape while still holding the mood.

Fog hovers on soft spring air,
tip-toes as a church bell chimes.
Work day traffic moves on everywhere.
Fog hovers on soft spring air.
Breeze tickles my face with hair.
Morning wakes right on time.
Fog hovers on soft spring air,
tip-toes as a church bell chimes.

(Margaret Simon, draft)

I used these two drafts to discuss revision with my students at the next school in the afternoon. I suggested they go back to a poem and revise it.

Max who is a humble poet will rarely share his poems out loud, so I asked his permission to share his revision here. He wrote it on Fanschool, and you can leave comments specifically for him there.

“Insects buzzing all around,

Bugs are feeding on the ground,

For there is no need for them to hurry,

So why should they need to worry?”

March 25th, 2025: I absolutely despise the quality of this poem. REVISE!

Insects hover in the air,

Gracefully, glide without care.

Spot a flower, beautifully white.

Harvesting energy, basking in the sunlight.

Insects, bugs, air and the ground.

Moving, flying, all around.

To hurry is not a worry, for them.

Unless by something, they’re found.

Then Scurry!

I would add something else, but this is just about it.
(Max, 6th grade)

How do you approach revision? Is it hard for you? I think students don’t usually like to revise. They like to write and move on to the next thing. Honestly until I read Max’s post, I thought the class didn’t think much of my little revision lesson. Modeling our own writing process with our students makes us vulnerable, but in the long run, shares how we all are in this together, writing side by side.

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Marcie.

Read Full Post »

Slice of Life Day 27: Finding Pinky

Posted in Books, Slice of Life, Teaching, tagged Kate DiCamillo, read aloud, student engagement on March 27, 2025| 10 Comments »

I have been reading aloud Kate DiCamillo’s new book Ferris. I’m a huge fan of Kate’s books. I stood in a long line to get a copy signed by her at the Mississippi Book Festival in the fall.

I’m reading the book to my combination 5th and 6th grade gifted class. Two of my girls got together and decided to create a sort of classroom game.

First Kailyn drew a poster of Pinky, Ferris’s crazy younger sister.

Marifaye made a wanted poster.

Together they made “aura” bucks.

They put me in charge of hiding her.

There is a list of rules, of course.

So far this game has been going on for two days. They’ve had to make a new rule that if you find Pinky, you can’t tell anyone (or even make gestures).

Today I put her in between books on the shelf.

So far no harm has come from this game and most of my students are playing along.

I don’t think I could have single-handedly come up with a better plan for engaging my class in a read aloud. I highly recommend Ferris. The basic theme that repeats throughout is “every good story is a love story.” With a sprinkle of Kate DiCamillo magic, my students are falling in love with this book.

Read Full Post »

Slice of Life Day 20: 1,000 Words

Posted in Poetry, Slice of Life, Teaching, Writing, tagged education, free verse poem, school, students, teaching, writing on March 20, 2025| 6 Comments »

How many words do you write in a blog post? Have you ever counted?

My students write on a blog site, Fanschool. (Some are doing the daily Classroom Slice of Life Challenge.) One of the cool features on Fanschool is the word count. I usually tell my students that 200-300 words are the best for blog posts. I use word count to encourage my young ones to elaborate on their topics. I also tell them that no one really wants to read more than 300 or so words at one time. Without my priming them, students will sometimes get competitive with themselves and others over word count. I’ve learned that while word count doesn’t really matter, it is something I can leverage if I need to. “Let’s set a goal for at least 100 words today.”

Chance didn’t need a word count limit or a competition; he was ready to pour out his heart and soul on the blog in the first quarter he landed in my class. He had things he wanted to share. At 4th grade, he’s not real adept at punctuating complex sentences, but when he writes, words flow. I was thinking of him when I wrote this poem.

The Space He Needed

On the blog space,
he wrote
and wrote.
I asked him “What are you writing?”
He said, “1000 words about my brothers.”

So many words, like a dam had been opened
to his life, his words.

A space to write
away from the constraints
of a paragraph about the Declaration
of Independence. The blog
opened his independence,
his need to tell the world
all he had been through.

For ten long years, he held
inside who he was, all his secrets,
waiting for this space
to declare his freedom.
Margaret Simon, draft

Read Full Post »

Slice of Life Day 15: Pi-ku Day

Posted in Gifted Education, Poetry, Slice of Life, Teaching, Writing, tagged Pi Day, Pi-ku on March 15, 2025| 12 Comments »

Yesterday on March 14th, I received this text from a colleague who teaches gifted math:

Every year my students and I write pi-ku on Pi Day. I literally have to look up the definition each year. I’m a writing teacher, not a math teacher and for that matter, not a math person.

Some of my gifted students want to show me (in full song) that they have memorized the first 100 digits of pi. This year I banned the song. It’s a complete ear worm.

But I did encourage a pi-ku poem. These are short form like haiku except the syllable count follows the digits of pi. (3, 1, 4, 5, 1, 9)

Circumference
Earth
a peppermint
pizza
diametric ride
all of us have Pi Day every year
(Carson, 3rd grade)

Happy Pi
day!
March the fourteenth.
Hey
come with us to
celebrate the day with some good pie.
(Kailyn, 6th grade)

Read Full Post »

Slice of Life 1: Brainrot Words

Posted in Gifted Education, Slice of Life, Teaching, Writing, tagged Gen Alpha slang, teaching gifted on March 1, 2025| 16 Comments »

I am a “Baby Boomer” while my students are all in “Gen Alpha”. Admittedly they would have a totally different slang system that I don’t know and honestly, don’t care to learn. Two of my students, a 5th grade and a 6th grade girl, teamed up to make an instructional slide show. They also made a multiple choice quiz.

I think they were surprised at how well I did on the quiz, but I pointed out that while I won’t remember any of this tomorrow, I know how to study for a test: Take notes! I wrote each word and the definition on a sticky note.

While we were watching the slide show, I continually asked, “If the principal walks in right now, would he be OK with this?” I kept getting the feeling from them that they were doing something wrong, and I was oblivious to it. They assured me that there was nothing above PG rating in the slide show. But there were a few that were cringy.

Here is a list of the words. (Let me know in the comments which ones you knew.)
1. sigma
2. hyperpigmentation
3. nonchalant
4. cap
5. rizz
6. girl math
7. goat
8. delulu
9. baddie
10. low taper fade
11. mewing
12. bussin
13. Ohio
14. aura
15. skibidi toilet
16. fantum tax

How did you do? I only knew 4 of them because they are words that have been around a while. The most cringy for me was “girl math”. I think it’s time to stop this stereotyping of girls. In truth, all of them have a bite of stereotyping and sass. They don’t give me confidence in our Alpha generation that are way too tech savvy and on their phones 24/7. I guess that’s why the title of the slideshow was “Brain Rot Words.”

What did impress me was the level of time and work these girls put into creating the slideshow and how serious they were about informing me. I hope I made a decent grade on the test. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to take a test.

Read Full Post »

Slice of Life: Heart Maps

Posted in Gifted Education, Poetry, Slice of Life, Teaching, Writing, tagged Danusha Lameris, Georgia Heard, heart maps, letter poems on February 11, 2025| 9 Comments »

I subscribe to Georgia Heard’s Heart map newsletter, Heartbeats. Last week she inspired me to use her print outs with my students on Poetry Friday.

We usually analyze a poem and write in the form of the poet or steal a line, etc. But on Friday, after the AR dance, we needed a break. I turned on Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. My students spread around the room and played with paper. I was surprised at how focused they became on a Friday!

We’ve returned to our heart maps to write poems from them. Some wrote as Georgia suggested, a letter poem to the thing you love most. Some wrote a poem like Danusha Laméris’s poem The Heart is Not.

Dear pillow,

You comfort
My head
Every night
And
Keep me warm
Until
It is morning
Where the sun
Rises.
When I go to school
I miss you
Because
You’re my
Object with a story.
James, 4th grade

I love how Marifaye took the map idea to a literal design making her heart look like a map. I sent this one to Georgia through Instagram. Marifaye wrote about her cat Carson. I feel partial to this poem because I was involved in matchmaking Marifaye to Carson. Carson was a stray kitten in my mother-in-law’s yard this summer. He was fostered by my friend Corrine. Then Marifaye’s family adopted him. He has found a soft place to land.

My Cat Carson:

How I love you so so much
makes me smile every touch
you make me happy
when I’m sad
hearing you purr
and watching your tail flap
hearing you meow, begging for pets
then you take off,
as fast as a jet.
as soon as someone comes get me
I just can’t wait
to see my baby
my baby cat,
Carson.
Marifaye, 5th grade

My messy heart map with letter poem draft.

Avalyn was drawn to the model poem by Danusha Laméris.

The Heart is Not

a bowl
it’s not something you could just place
your thoughts,
emotions,
memories in
until it overflows.

The heart is not a bowl
it’s not something you could just
discard

The heart is not a bowl
it’s not just a
pretty
decoration.
Avalyn, 5th grade