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Gallery Poetry

Posted in Poetry Friday, Teaching, tagged A&E Gallery, ekphrastic poetry, Paul Schexnayder on December 4, 2015| 15 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up with Buffy at Buffy’s Blog

Walking down Main Street you may find a poem in a window.

Or you can stop in at A&E Gallery and see that poets have been there.

Space Man and Space Dog
walk the moon alone,
with only each other
to keep company
on the long way home
–Vannisa

Paul Schexnayder has started a series of Circus Gators in his paintings. This makes for a crazy circus poem.

Cirque du Gator
a green gator circus,
a scaly trapeze,
two mingy gymnasts,
and a sharp-toothed dancer.
–Emily

$100 is the price
for a patriotic watermelon sunrise.
A alligator
stealing a watermelon from a chubaka?
Greedy green gator
masking the red white and blue.
–Kaiden

Beauty marks the spot.
An angel from high above is calling.
I won’t let go of your baby boy,
I promise.
–Kielan

I joined in the secret poem walk and wrote to the work in progress.

An empty frame
waits
layers
of color
build
a world,
a circus
of imagination.
–Margaret Simon

A field trip down Main Street can be a poetic treat.

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Fabulous Fibs

Posted in Poetry Friday, Teaching, Writing, tagged fibonacci poem, Fish in a Tree, Greg Pincus, Lynda Mullaly Hunt, Voxer, Wat Buddhist Temple on October 30, 2015| 11 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up with Mary Lee at A Year of Reading

Do you know about the famous Fibonacci Sequence? The ages old sequence that creates a spiral, a shape found in nature? The mathematical sequence is 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8…Do you see the pattern? More information (including algebraic equations) can be found at Math is Fun.

I had forgotten about using the sequence in poetry until a colleague introduced it to our 6th grade enrichment group. We are working on Unsung Hero projects. Our previous meeting had been a field trip to see and hear about heroes in our own town. She asked the students to recall the field trip by writing a Fib poem. I wrote about the Buddhist Temple in our local Laotian community.

Wat Thammarattanaram, New Iberia, LA

Stands
tall
above
Buddhist monks
humbly giving self,
Temple of golden ornaments,
Temple of sacrifice,
meditate on lasting love.
–Margaret Simon

A Fib poem follows the syllable count as in the mathematical sequence, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8. And if you are feeling wordy, you can tack on a line of 13 and 21.

A few years ago I had used this form with my students when we were sharing The 14 Fibs of Gregory K by Greg Pincus.

I tried out the form on my other students. I asked them to write about our field trip to New Orleans, the Aquarium and Insectarium, last week. The exercise was quite a challenge. I, too, struggled. But that’s what writing is all about, right? We made a padlet.

Each afternoon, I read aloud another chapter of Fish in a Tree. We usually write notices and wonders to add to the Voxer chat with other classes, but yesterday, I asked Jacob to write a Fib poem with me about Ally, the main character. We started over 3 times. Jacob was being very patient. Each time he’d write the syllable count down the margin of his journal page. Finally we liked what was coming, but we couldn’t quite get that last line. Then Jacob just blurted it out. Some days my young students blow my mind. We recorded it on the Voxer chat.

Why?
Why?
Ally
thinks she’s dumb,
so afraid to tell,
hates being locked up in her brain.
–Jacob

Using strict forms can be frustrating, but when it works, when we discover a winning line, we can say “Boom, Gotcha” to that Fib!

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DigiLit Sunday: From Poetry to Science

Posted in Blogging, clmooc, Digital Learning, Gratitude, Teaching, Writing, tagged Emaze, poetry, Wonderopolis on October 25, 2015| 5 Comments »

Please use this button on your site for DigiLit Sunday posts

When my student Vannisa wanted to write a fall poem, she looked to the skies. She wrote this poem including the science of meteor showers that occur in fall.

As We Fall

As we fall into winter,
the weather chills
and the leaves come down.
They fill the ground with
a fiery red
and blazing orange.

As we fall into winter,
we can no longer watch fireworks
like 4th of July,
but we can watch
the shooting stars of
Orionids and Leonids
and watch the days get shorter
until Spring comes back again.
–Vannisa

She had a blog comment on her poem asking her more about the Orionids. When she was looking for something to research for her Wonder of the Week, I suggested the meteor shower. Each week I have my students use Wonderopolis to read nonfiction and respond by writing about what they learned. They then have the option to create a class presentation using technology.

Vannisa had to expand her research beyond Wonderopolis and this was my intent all along, that some little spark would send my students into real, authentic research.

Click the image to view the Emaze.

Know: Orionids is a meteor shower that occurs in late October. A shooting star is a meteor and not an actual star. The name for the shower is Orionids because most of the comets will be toward the constellation Orion.

Wonder: What Causes a Shooting Star?, Where Is the Big Dipper?, How Many Stars Are In The Sky?

Learned: A meteor is formed from rock that burns up in Earth’s atmosphere, causing it to look like a streak of light in the sky. A piece of a meteor is called a meteorite. The Big Dipper is mostly referred to as a constellation, but it’s actually an asterism. Our galaxy has about 200 billion to 400 billion star. Scientist predict that there are 100 billion to 200 billion galaxies in the universe. Based on the latest estimates, astronomers guess that there are 300 sextillion stars in the universe which is 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. That is 1 billion times 1 billion times 3!

Burning Question: How did they find out how many stars there are?
https://www.emaze.com/@AICIROTW/orionids

Days when learning and creativity come together I realize the true joy of discovery. I strive to give my students the open door that will lead them on their own journey of learning, not down a path I have designed, but one they have chosen. It doesn’t happen every day. But with Vannisa and her spark of interest in meteor showers, these two paths converged and made meaningful learning. Through blogging, she was able to share it with others. Win. Win.

Add your own Digital Literacy posts here:

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Text to Self Connections

Posted in Blogging, Slice of Life, Teaching, Writing, tagged Fish in a Tree, Global Read Aloud, Padlet, text to self connections, Voxer on October 20, 2015| 15 Comments »

Join the Two Writing Teachers blog for Tuesdays Slice of Life Challenge.

I largely believe that my blog audience is fellow teachers, but sometimes I meet readers on Main Street, and sometimes they call me on the phone. Both happened to me this weekend. I saw Mac at a local art gallery for Art Walk on Saturday evening. He started up a conversation about reading aloud and how he was happy I was doing that with my students. He told me about how his family read aloud, and he passed it on to his kids and grandchildren, and now even great grandchildren.

I got a phone call from a friend who wanted to tell me that she appreciated the work I was doing with kids to connect reading to their own lives. She shared that she is going through something very difficult, and my posts help her. What? Really? I was moved to tears.

Receiving praise for writing reaches farther and deeper than any other kind of praise because writing is so personal. I want to bring this type of understanding to my students along with the joy and pride of knowing their writing touched someone else. I work to build connections for them. On our kidblog site, we have connected to other classes. I encourage them to find a student from another class to connect with.

We teachers talk with our readers about making text to self connections. Usually these connections seem false. When we make those connections together around a shared text and then share them globally, this writing holds more meaning. The stakes are higher. The voice is authentic.

On Padlet, I posted this question for students to write about in connection to the Global Read Aloud, Fish in a Tree: “In Fish in a Tree, Ally doesn’t tell anyone about her trouble with reading. She has an opportunity in Mrs. Silver’s office and even with her mom, but she resists out of fear. Have you ever had something so troublesome that you just didn’t know how to or were afraid to tell the truth?”

To get them started, I posted my own story.

When I was very young, maybe around 6, I was playing with matches outside with the neighbors. Before we really knew what was happening, the yard was in flames. The blanket for our “campout”, my favorite doll, the pillows from my brother’s bed…in flames. Fear sent me inside. I climbed in my mother’s lap and cried and cried. She got very angry because she was on the telephone. Finally I squeezed out the word “Fire!” and she went running. I don’t remember much after that moment, but to this day I feel very guilty about that accident.

When my students read it, they immediately gasped, “Matches? You played with matches?” My mother now knows the whole story, but I still cannot shake the guilt and trauma of burning the front yard. That spot in the grass seemed to stay black forever.

I sent out a Voxer message to colleagues in California, Ohio, and Illinois. They responded by writing their own stories. So my students had 4 adult models to read Monday morning before writing their own. Thanks Julianne, Julie, and Phyllis.

Click on the image to see the Padlet.

I am excited our writing is becoming richer and holding more meaning. Making connections with text, then having someone else connect to our own writing is a powerful way to communicate and spread kindness and understanding.

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Writer’s Block

Posted in Poetry Friday, Teaching, Writing, tagged Fish in a Tree, Global Read Aloud, Lynda Mullaly Hunt, reader response on October 16, 2015| 11 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up with my dear friend, Amy, at The Poem Farm.

Mrs. Simon, I don’t know what to write.
Oh, no! I don’t have anything to write about!
I have writer’s block today, Mrs. Simon.

These words echo in my classroom regularly. Why? Because we are all writers. And we all know that writing is hard.

I asked my students to write long about a book we are reading. (Global Read Aloud: Fish in a Tree by Lynda Mullaly HUnt.) You could hear the sighs. For some reason, that bad word…long…sent them into total fear. So I saddled up to the computer connected to the board. After stumbling over the necessary technology to get them to see what I was writing, I set about modeling a long writing.

I actually surprised myself that I could do this on-demand-in-front-of-everybody writing from nothing. But I realized that it all comes from practice. I just started typing and the words came. My students laughed at my typos as I was trying to type quickly. They noticed that my long writing was only 140 words. The assignment became less intimidating.

Yet, one of my best writers sat in front of her computer not typing. And it seemed the longer she stared at the blank page, the harder it got for her to start. I didn’t have a very good answer for her. It happens. We’re writers. We are going to have those days when nothing comes to mind. So I let her leave class with this instruction, “Think about what you may want to write about and we’ll start again tomorrow.” Some writers need time to think.

I know this is Poetry Friday, and you are asking yourself, “Where’s the poem?” Sometimes with writing, you need to write about what you need to write about.

Kielan is a writer. She is in 6th grade, and I’ve taught her since she was in second grade. She’s had her share of writer’s block, but she is connecting with Ally in Fish in a Tree. This is her long writing about how she was bullied like Ally.

In Lynda Mullaly Hunt’s book Fish In A Tree, Ally’s at the restaurant where her mother works. Her mother is a waitress there. While Ally is at the restaurant suddenly her “friends” walk in. Shay and Jessica walk in the restaurant and start talking to Ally.

Ally tries to resist them, but her mother thinks she should talk with them. Her mother doesn’t know what Shay and Jessica do to Ally. They talk to her about the sympathy card Ally gave to their teacher. Something similar like this happened to me too.

I was in 4th grade when it happened. A girl named Emily was in my class. Every time a teacher was near she was nice to me, but when there was no teacher near she was mean to me. When she was nice to me I would reject her and then I would get in trouble.

She sat right in front of me in class and we were kind of enemies. I had to read aloud in class and answer the question. I read the passage right, but I got the answer wrong. Then she got called on and she got the question right. She looked at me, gave me a mean look, and then rolled her eyes. After school she saw me in Mcdonald’s at Walmart. She called me smart, her friend, pretty, and nice, only because my mother was around, but then the next day at school, she called me dumb, mean, her enemy, and ugly. She made me think I was dumb. Just like Ally felt in the story.

I made my own quote. “Trust no one” and “Never trust a phony with anything”.–Kielan

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Fall Poems

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, Teaching, tagged chalkabration, fall poetry, student poems on October 9, 2015| 12 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up with Laura Purdie Salas.

Photo by Kam Abbott

The weather actually cooled off last week, so with the crispness of the air and the ending of September, we ventured out to the sidewalk to chalk fall poems.

I love to post poems that my students write. Today I celebrate a new writer in my class. Kaiden, 5th grade, joined us at the end of the year last year. (Gifted classes are revolving all year.) I love how he used the repetitive rhythm of the word fall as well as imagery about the season.

Fall
by Kaiden
Crisp brown leaves crunching under our feet
Fall
The cool breeze blowing against our faces,
Fall
The appearance of scary monsters and pumpkins,
Fall
A possible stroll through pumpkin patch,
Birds migrate south,
Fall

Vannisa, 6th grade, is back this year and adding in a little research into her fall poem. She actually looked up which meteor showers occur in the fall. I love how she wanted to connect meteor showers with fireworks.

As we Fall
by Vannisa
As we fall into winter,
the weather chills
and the leaves come down.
They fill the ground with
a fiery red
and blazing orange.

As we fall into winter,
we can no longer watch fireworks
like 4th of July,
but we can watch
the shooting stars of
Orionids and Leonids
and watch the days get shorter
until Spring comes back again.

by Emily

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DigiLit Sunday: Voxer

Posted in Blogging, Digital Learning, Teaching, tagged Global Read Aloud, Two Writing Teachers, Voxer on October 4, 2015| 5 Comments »

Please use this button on your site for DigiLit Sunday posts

Voxer is my current favorite app on my phone. It’s like having a Walkie-Talkie to all your friends in your PLN. Last week, Kathleen Sokolowski from the Two Writing Teachers site posted about her use of Voxer. She then invited us to participate in a Voxer book club around Lisa Eickholdt’s book Learning from Classmates: Using Students’ Writing as Mentor Texts. My copy arrived yesterday. Kathleen is currently collecting participants, so if you’d like to join a lively bunch of writing teachers talking about classroom practices, email Kathleen at mrs.sokolowski at gmail.

Another Voxer group that I love is my Writing about Reading group. This week I had a triumph and a fail, and this group was there for me. I had a place to celebrate and a place to vent.

On Voxer, you can leave text messages or voice messages. The voice is a powerful tool. I’d like to explore this tool with my students. I am participating in Global Read Aloud reading Fish in a Tree by Lynda Mullaly Hunt. My kids can’t wait to get started. I would like to connect with a class through Voxer. I haven’t quite wrapped my head around how it would work, but my thinking as of now is this. We could pick one student each day to speak for the class. The message could be a notice or a wonder about the book. What do you think? Please email me if you would like to connect our kids through Voxer.

If you are blogging about Digital Literacy, please link up your post.

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The Memory String

Posted in Books, Slice of Life, Teaching, tagged Eve Bunting, personal narrative writing, The Memory String on September 22, 2015| 13 Comments »

Join the Two Writing Teachers blog for Tuesdays Slice of Life Challenge.

I was in the library looking for another Eve Bunting book and came across this one. I sat right down on the floor and read it. Then I had an idea. I wasn’t sure it would work, but I thought of all the buttons I had collected in a box in my closet. What did I need them all for?

One of my goals for my teaching this year is to bring in more picture books. I am reading one each week. In The Memory String, the character Laura has a string full of buttons. Her mother died three years before, and her stepmother is trying to win Laura’s heart. Laura’s memory string is her way of holding on to the memory of her mother.

I brought my cigar box of buttons into class and after reading the story, the students each selected 3-5 buttons. I told them they would be writing a memory for each button. We sewed the buttons on a string, and the students began writing. This was a great form to prompt writing.

Here are some student samples:

The fourth button is a blueish greenish color. It reminds me of the first time I swam in the ocean. It was 2011 and I was 7 years old. I was still living in Minnesota, and I had never even gone near the ocean. We were going on a road trip to Florida. The first time I swam in the ocean was in the Atlantic Ocean. It was a pretty beach with water that looked clear and bright. I loved it, but I never got to swim at a beach like that again. (Vannisa)

This is the story of the button that is gold and black. This button reminds me of my brother. This button reminds me of him because when we all brought him home from the hospital, it was cold and he was wearing a jacket that had a button that looked like this button. This button also reminds me of myself because that was the same jacket that I wore when I was brought home from the hospital. That was the story of the button that is gold and black. (Lani)

One button is absolutely clear, and its very small. It reminds me of how I feel when my dad is gone, and when he is usually gone for months. One time, he didn’t come back for half a year. I missed him very much, but when he came back, I was happy to see him.(Tobie)

Any one of these button memories could be a longer personal narrative (or Slice of Life) story. I hear the lament often, “I don’t know what to write about.” A picture book story and a box of buttons can open up a string of memories.

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Slicing Life with Students

Posted in Blogging, Slice of Life, Teaching, Writing, tagged Anne Frank quotes, Sept. 11th on September 15, 2015| 8 Comments »

Join the Two Writing Teachers blog for Tuesdays Slice of Life Challenge.

“I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn. –Anne Frank”

I have been writing a Slice of Life post every Tuesday (most Tuesdays) for years. Four years, I think. And in March, I write everyday for the Slice of Life Challenge, thanks to the Two Writing Teachers.

I want to pass on a love of writing to my students. The Slice of Life habit works many writing muscles; and yet, I can package it to my students as a way for us to share little tidbits of our lives. I can make it sound like fun, not a chore-like writing assignment.

On Monday, I ask the question, “How was you weekend?” As the stories start materializing through talk, I respond, “That would make a good Slice of Life story.”

Yesterday, Kielan came to my desk wanting to share all about her weekend. I asked her if she wanted to share it with the whole class, and she responded, “No. They can read about it in my Slice.”

I love how after only a few weeks of school, my students are immersed in blogging. I was checking the blog this morning and found a post from Tobie about Sept. 11th. I hadn’t brought up the date. They had an art enrichment activity that morning, so we didn’t have time to properly cover it. Actually that was my excuse because it’s always more difficult for me to talk about than it is for the students.

But Tobie hadn’t let it go by. His posts are usually rather silly, but here he shows another side, the strong sensitive side. He never said anything out loud about the date. Blogging gave him a way to express his thoughts.

Today is one of the worst days in American history. We are marking the day of the nightmare of the terrorists of September 11, 2001. Today marks the day that terrorists have crashed our own planes, gotten by hijack, into the World Wide Trading Center. Thousands injured or killed, kids without parents. We must remember the men and women lost, and the ones who fought for them. Only few were pulled from the chaos of fire and barrier, plane parts and glass. All of this at the hands of terrorists, who do this for fun or money. They don’t care for the lives of many innocent Americans. Let us have a second of silence, for the men and women, and even children lost, injured, or no family to take them in.

America has suffered much from this day, and we must not forget this day, 14 years ago. Our parents have been alive during this tragedy, in school or out of it. The Towers have been rebuilt, or are being rebuilt. We will never want another 9/11.
–Tobie, 5th grade

On Mondays, I am posting a quote for response, “Mrs. Simon’s Snippet of the Sea.” This week, I posted a video of Anne Frank quotes and asked the students to select one to write about. Lani expresses well her feelings about writing in her response.

The quote that I chose was, and I quote ”I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.” I think this quote means that when you write you can get everything that is bothering you off of your chest. For example, Anne Frank must’ve had courage before she went into hiding, so she is saying that now she has sorrow, but when she writes her sorrow is gone and she then has courage. I personally think that this quote has the same meaning today just like in the past because when I write my courage comes back if I am writing about a time when I had sorrow.
–Lani

Slicing and blogging with my students gives them the platform and audience for making meaning with their writing. If you are not blogging with students yet, I suggest you try it. And if you are and you want to connect on kidblogs, let me know.

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Reaching

Posted in Celebration Saturday, Chalk-a-bration, Teaching, tagged Caroline Star Rose, One Little Word, rainbows, Reach on September 5, 2015| 9 Comments »

Ruth Ayres invites us the celebrate each week. Click over to her site Discover. Play. Build. to read more celebrations.

My one little word for 2015 is Reach. I was determined to reach with my writing. Take it to the next level. Well, this week came rejection. I hear from other authors that this is expected, normal, and we must power through, but it sent me into a slump. Because of Ruth’s invitation to celebrate each Saturday, I am climbing back up the tree and reaching out again.

I celebrate dancing! Friday night I’m tired, but I said yes to his invitation to go Cajun dancing. We only danced three songs, but we left smiling.

I celebrate rainbows. This week I’ve seen rainbows on two consecutive mornings on the way to school. One morning I pulled over and took pictures, the rainbow in the west, the glowing sun in the east.

Morning rainbow

Sunrise

I celebrate authors I admire. I received a signed copy of Over in the Wetlands, a beautiful book by Caroline Starr Rose about the place I live. She captured the magic of the wetlands, along with the fearful hurricane and the peace and rebirth that follows. She sent bookmarks and stickers for my students. I celebrate making connections with authors.

Over in the Wetlands by Caroline Starr Rose

In the midst of a rough week of state pretesting, I celebrate Chalkabration. We went outside in the South Louisiana heat and chalked up the sidewalks with poetry inspired by Laura Purdie Salas’s book Catch Your Breath: Writing Poignant Poetry.

Chalking poetry

This invitation to Celebrate each week helps me to see that there is much to rejoice. Rejection is small. Reaching is big. What are you celebrating today?

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