Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
This month I am following Georgia Heard’s calendar of prompts for small poems. I am posting daily on Instagram. But this poem response “A List of Last Times” was a little long for that platform.
As the end of the school year and my retirement approaches, I am experiencing many lasts. Some are easy to let go off, some are harder.
Last List for Closing Out the School Year
Complete SLT “student learning target” Last essays: read, evaluate, give feedback.
Last lesson plans: standard noted opening student work closing Submit for review.
Last Field Trip forms: list students collect money get check from the office.
Last hallway walk (How many steps have I taken on this hall?) my own safe space books, books, books student voices echo a full nest empty (fledglings flown.)
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.
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.
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
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.
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
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.
Pinky, Ferris’s sister, is an outlaw.
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).
Pinky hid behind a photograph.
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.
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
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
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
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)
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
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.
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
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.
James’s heart map
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
Marifaye’s Heart Map
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
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
The first day back from our holiday break, my students were excited about the idea of beginning the year with 100 Days of Notebooking (à la Michelle Haseltine) and One Little Word.
I saw an Instagram post by Jen Vincent (2024 Donald Graves Award recipient and all around fabulous writing teacher) about using question-storming for discovering your One Little Word. @storyexploratory
Jen graciously sent me a pre-made Google slideshow to use. (Ah, I love a free gift.) My older students, 4th-6th, responded well. The younger ones in 2nd grade needed a bit more guidance. But the basic idea was to write down questions about how you could make 2025 an awesome year. The answers to the questions would lead them to a One Little Word.
I chose a word last week and posted about it for Spiritual Thursday. Jen’s question-storming led me to a different word. I was surprised by this. Is it OK to change your word? As I look to retirement at the end of this school year and wonder about my future, the word Believe came forward.
After the question-storming activity, I allowed some creative working time. Some students made a sketch of their word. Some wrote an acrostic poem. I encouraged them to post on Fanschool. A few came up with their own idea: Make a whole slideshow. At the end of class, we were all sharing eagerly.
If you haven’t found your One Little Word yet, try asking yourself some questions. I was impressed with the sincerity of my students and how they wanted to explore and share their ideas. I feel we’ve started off the second half of our year together as a community of thinkers and writers.
Margaret Simon lives on the Bayou Teche in New Iberia, Louisiana. She is a retired elementary gifted teacher who writes poetry and children's books. Welcome to a space of peace, poetry, and personal reflection. Walk in kindness.
