One of our favorite days of the year is Dot Day. Created to celebrate the publication of The Dot by Peter Reynolds, Dot Day encourages creativity and playful art.
My students and I drew dots and wrote Zeno poems. The Zeno form was invented by J. Patrick Lewis. The form uses a syllable count of 8, 4, 2, 1, 4, 2, 1, 4, 2, 1 with each 1 syllable line rhyming. This is a playful form. We folded paper into a zine. To see how to make a zine, go to this post from last year.
Imagining the brightest knot
see the colors
of the dot
colors of the
rainbow
spot
Brightest of the
ones I’ve
got
Breighlynn, 4th grade
It is true that you have talent you are so high in the sky you should always attempt try you are in clouds try to fly
In early August, Molly Hogan wrote a post about titles and suggested that we use a title of a poem to spark a new poem. I took it one step further. I read the poem of the intriguing title and wrote a response poem. From Molly’s post, I clicked on A Poem for Pulse.
After reading the poem, my writing went on a roller coaster ride of response. It just flowed out. Here’s the draft with little revision. I’m not sure if it reads as a poem on its own, without the original poem.
A Poem for Pulse
Digging deep into the dirt of a poem about guns and death and people judging people was a line that caught my breath, made me gasp
for air because I thought at first the air was too thick to breathe through. I thought I knew the end.
This poem took me for a fool and made me question myself. Am I the shooter or the lover?
We must love one another whether or not we die.
The poet’s directive pointed to love, away from judgement, or criticism which is really only fear. Not giving in, an act of resistance.
In the end, there was kissing.
Margaret Simon, draft, response to A Poem for Pulse by Jamison Fitzpatrick
With my gifted kids, I’ve been using Linda Rief’s Quickwrite Handbook. She offers mentor texts and prompts for writing. These mentor text quickwrite prompts give a jumpstart to a blog post. I write with my students. Today I want to share a few responses to “When I was Young in the Mountains” by Cynthia Rylant. Linda Rief wrote “When I was Young at the Ocean” and included many sensory images. We were able to see how using senses in our writing creates strong imagery for the reader to understand. Karson took us to his eye doctor appointment.
When I was young at the eye doctor, I was very nervous. I did not know what I would look like with glasses on. I did not know if I would even end up with glasses! We went to the eye doctor at Lens Crafters in the mall. They called me,” Karson, we are ready for you.” When I was young at the eye doctor they had to check my eyes. The room was really small. The light was dim. I sat in a rolling chair like my teacher’s. They made me look at a farmhouse while they took pictures. Then they made me look at a green light. That scanned my eyes. When I was young, I cried and cried because I did not want to do the thingy where it blows air. The doctor was a woman, and she was so nice, she let me skip it. When I was young at the eye doctor, I thought I had to dilate my eyes but I also cried and cried and I had tears dripping with sweat because I was scared. But because I was crying, I did not have to do that either. When I was young at the eye doctor, I eventually got glasses. I was okay with it because I look so cool. My glasses are my friends. They still are.
Karson, 5th grade
This summer I had to say good-bye to my parents’ house on the lake. The memories are bringing me back, and writing helps me process them.
When I was a Daughter at the Lake
When I was a daughter at the lake, I swung on the porch swing pushing off from a little plastic stool and listening to the squeak of the chains. Sometimes my father sat near me with his newspaper and a bowl of cereal. He’d look up to tell me a bit of news. “Listen to this!” he’d exclaim, and I’d laugh internally at his total exasperation at the world.
When I was a daughter at the lake, I’d sleep late with no alarm set, waking to the scent of coffee and pancakes, maple syrup, melting butter. Mom in her robe stood near the griddle and greeted me with a smile. “Good morning, sleepy-head.”
When I was their daughter at the lake, worries melted away like the sunset on the horizon. We’d talk and talk. Sometimes we’d sit silently watching the heron fishing. Their presence was enough. It still is.
Margaret Simon, draft, 2019
Shaelon remembered his vacation to Florida this summer. Using the form helped him describe many details of the trip. This is just one of his four paragraphs. The repeated line is helpful in creating a framework for writing.
When I was nine at the beach, we got to the beach.I ran and felt the nice soft sand on my toes.I ran to the water and touched it.It felt warm and soothing.I ran in until it was to my waist.Now it felt cold.I hurried back to the shore and look for my mom.My sister and I sat down on the sand next to my mom and attempted to try and make a sand castle.We had made good progress until the tide came in and washed it away.I gave up and walked along the shore, picking up shells and looking at their beauty.I tried to see if I can hear the water lapping in the shell because my sister had told me I can.I ran back and showed my mom all the shells I had collected.
Shaelon, 6th grade
I will continue to find inspiring writing prompts in Linda Rief’s book. When we study other authors, we discover our own way to writing.
Our Sunday Night Swagger Writers Group has decided to post poems from a prompt on the first Friday of the month. Last month Heidi Mordhorst challenged us to definito poems. This month Catherine Flynn prompted us to write about a box:
Who was the owner of the box?
How did what is inside the box transform him or her?
Having acquired some things from my parents’ home this summer, I knew what box I would write about. My grandmother whom I called Nene died when I was young, between 8 and 10. I remember so much about her, her white-white hair, how she sewed beautiful Barbie clothes and even made doll furniture from cardboard, and how she loved butterflies. She had a pinned collection in a shadow box. But that isn’t the box of this poem. I had never seen this box before. It was tucked inside a cardboard box of mementos from my father’s childhood.
This is Her Box
that touched her hands so many years ago. A small brass box that fits in the palm of my hand. What did these things mean to her?
a tarnished silver spoon, jeweled pin, wire-framed butterfly, silver post earrings–
I put on the charm bracelet; Grands’ names in birth order become my connection to her.
All tucked into her box for me to find fifty years later and remember her touch.
As long as I am here, I will continue to grow and change and learn. I once thought that the first Corinthians verse was about love between a husband and wife. It’s often read aloud at weddings and speaks clearly about how you successfully love your spouse, with patience and kindness, without self-seeking and anger.
This year I’ve been engaged in a study of The Course in Miracles. My instructor reads the lessons daily to me (and others) using Voxer. She offers a meditation practice as well. The process of growth has been slow and gradual, hardly even noticeable if you know me. The language is what is changing. My instructor has changed the word God to the word Love. This seems small and insignificant, like a little nudge to my thinking.
I have attended church all my life. I’ve heard the words of the Bible over and over. Yet changing God from a person-like thing to an emotion has had profound effects on my thoughts. When God is with us, Love is with us.
We are called to be Love to one another. To be patient and kind in all that we do. Not to envy or boast or look out for ourselves. This is a call to service. God is Love. Love is God. How simple! How true!
I find peace in the knowledge that God has already given me everything I need to be successful. Love. It really is all we need. Love is everything. Love is enough.
See more posts at Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life
new baby blanket waiting
My middle daughter, Katherine, is waiting. We are all waiting for her baby to be born. His due date is Sept. 5th, so he will be here soon.
Last summer in August, Katherine had a miscarriage. It was tragic, yet her doctor told her then that she expected she would be holding a baby within a year. The day after the procedure, I took Katherine to a little yarn shop to pick out yarn for a blanket. I have been crocheting prayer shawls and blankets for the last few years. She said, “I’ll pick out the colors, but I don’t want you to make a baby blanket.” That was her sorrow talking. The blanket above is complete and waiting.
One method I often use for finding my way into a poem is to observe outside, then go inside, and back outside. Driving home a few weekends ago following the Mississippi Book Festival, I looked outside and inside and outside for this poem.
So We Must Daily Keep Things Wound (title from a Madeleine L’Engle quote)
I love how the raindrops glisten on glass dotting the landscape green and awake.
I keep the cell phone charged ready for her call when cramps turn to contractions. I wait, want, worry.
I read somewhere that the egg for this child was planted in her womb from my womb– this curious circle of life.
I keep my eyes on the clouds fluffed up and pregnant with rain, more rain. It keeps on coming.
(draft) Margaret Simon
NCTE Note: I’ve registered for NCTE 2019 to be held in Baltimore Nov. 21st-24th. I am looking for a roommate. Let me know by email if you are interested.
A few weeks ago the Sunday Night Swaggers, my online writing group, posted a new form created by poet and teacher Heidi Mordhorst, the definito: a free verse poem of 8-12 lines that uses word play to define a word. The word is the last line of the poem.
I introduced the form to my students. Every Friday we are deconstructing poetry and writing our own. We name and mark poetic elements. This activity inspired me to write definitos about poetic terms. I am sharing three of them today, alliteration, imagery, and personification.
Letters, linked and lively, Lindy-hopping on the page Notice how some sounds repeat Tongue twister Word sister …alliteration.
Make a movie in your mind Imagine all that tastes, feels, sounds– hands gripping, feet slipping, Writers show me how to see with imagery.
If the wind waves If flowers wink If hummingbirds tell a tale. A thing you know A thing you love becomes a person real and alive walking across the page personification.
See more posts at Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life
Last week I read my teacher-blogger-writer-friend Molly Hogan’s Slice of Life post. It touched the poet in me. Molly wakes early and goes on photography quests. When we’re lucky, she takes us along on her Facebook posts or blog. Last week she wrote this post entitled A Generous Morning.
Inspired, I copied her words into a found poem. Her generous morning became my generous morning. That’s how it works with creativity; it’s all big magic.
A Generous Morning
Lightening sky in the east as surely as the birds were migrating south, I missed the swallows.
The sky seemed lonely. Then a couple of swallows dart and dive through the air currents, and a bird approaching in the distance-
a heron
Sun rose higher, lit the mist. Cedar waxwings flittered. I watched it all, the generosity of morning.
a found poem by Margaret Simon using Molly Hogan’s words.
The children’s poetry community lost a friend and a mentor when Lee Bennett Hopkins died on August 8th. I never had the pleasure of meeting him, but in everything I’ve read about him, he was a gentle leader and proud father of poetry.
Among his many anthologies, I have Amazing Places on my classroom shelf. In it, Lee Bennett Hopkins collected poems about places around our country. His contribution was a poem titled Langston.
Though his professional writing was successful, it was the death of poet Langston Hughes in 1967 that proved to be a spark for Hopkins’s career of anthologizing poetry for children.
By Shannon Maughan | Aug 13, 2019
Amazing Places: Poems selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins, Lee & Low Books, 2015.
While borrowing a few lines as well as the form of this poem and reading his obituary on Publishers Weekly, I wrote this poem for Lee.
His Dusts of Dreams after Lee Bennett Hopkins “Langston” for Lee Bennett Hopkins, 1938-2019
Who would have known a young boy of divorce, a poor student inspired by a teacher would find his footing in education–
from student to teacher to collector of poems, With greetings to all Dear Ones, he left his dusts of dreams.
We started our first Monday together with this quote. I introduced notebook writing. Begin with a quote, talk a bit about it, then write for 10 minutes. Writing alongside my students gives me great joy. I’ve missed this over the summer and happy to have it back.
Here’s a little peek into my notebook musings:
There’s a book by Parker Palmer with the title “The Courage to Teach.” I read it years ago, and I can’t remember much about it, but the title still resonates. I’m entering my 32nd year of teaching. I would be what they call a “veteran” teacher. You could say I’ve earned my grey hair, but I rarely feel like an expert. Everyday teaching requires courage. You must put aside the headache from lack of sleep (or lack of caffeine, or both), and be ready to listen and see each student as a child who needs you to love them, to know them, and to understand them.
Currently I am listening to Cornelius Minor’s book We Got This. I highly recommend it even though I’m just a few chapters in. Cornelius speaks of the courage to teach as well as the necessity that we be intentional with our every step. We need to teach in a way that meets the needs of our students. And we get to know these needs by listening.
I’m encouraged that what I do for my students (notebook writing, independent reading, etc.) are courageous steps toward being a compassionate teacher. I need to trust the years of experience to guide me and comfort me in the knowledge that I Got This. Courage doesn’t always roar. It’s a daily walk, a listening ear, and a loving heart.
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.
Reflections on the Teche 