Reflections on the Teche

Another week of writing from The Quickwrite Handbook by Linda Rief. I have two pieces of writing I’d like to share today. The first was a prompt after Cynthia Rylant’s When I Was Young in the Mountains. Linda Rief wrote a mentor text “When I Was Young at the Ocean.” I wrote “When I Was Young at Purple Creek.”

When I was young at Purple Creek, I dangled my toes in the trickle of water and watched minnows dart around them, sending tickles and goose pimples all the way up my skinny white legs. 

When I was young at Purple Creek, I buried my Barbies in the sand, played Treasure Island on the wrip-wrap shore, and let go of the leash so Loopy could wander and explore, bark at the squirrels. 

When I was young at Purple Creek, my fear of snakes was on high alert. Brother shouted a warning just to see me jump. We gathered treasures in a tin bucket (rocks, broken glass, colored leaves, mimosa seed pods, a baby frog).

My flip-flop feet toughened on summer days when I was young at Purple Creek. The trickle was my ocean. The shoreline my cave. The pine trees my towers. I was queen of Purple Creek.

Margaret Simon

The next text we read and wrote from was an Excerpt from The Terrible Two by Mac Barnett and Jory John.

That Kind of Teacher

On the first day of school, you can decide what kind of teacher you want to be. You can be the smiley teacher, the one who greets everyone at the door with “How are you today?” You could be the fashionable teacher, the one who turns heads with her new outfit each day. You could be the kind of teacher who knows everything about the new reading curriculum guidelines. The teacher who decorates her classroom in rainbow colors and files everything in matching color-coded binders. You could be the teacher who stands at the board and takes roll, who finishes her report cards on time. Or you could be that teacher who works as hard as her students. The curious teacher. The open-minded teacher. The teacher with a lot of stickers on the chart. When the school year starts, you can choose what kind of teacher you will be, the kind of teacher you will be for the rest of your life. 

Margaret Simon

And here’s 6th grader Chloe’s poem response for “I’m the Kind of Kid Who”

I’m the kind of kid
who leaves
at the end of class,
new kids asking why.
I say
“Guess” to hear
what they think.

I’m the kind of kid
who always does their work
or finishes their homework
in class so 
they have nothing left
to do.

I’m the kind of kid
whose teacher lets
them eat in class
as long as
she doesn’t see me.

I’m the kind of kid
who writes every day.
If you don’t 
know what I mean,
I’m doing it right now.

I’m the kind of kid
who is ready
for the weekend
and is actually
ready to come
back to school. 

Chloe

Adelyn, 3rd grade, wrote about her sister and posted it here on FanSchool.