chalkabration | Reflections on the Teche

Posts Tagged ‘chalkabration’

This Photo Wants to be a Poem: This is a Rainbow

Posted in Photography, Poetry, Writing, tagged chalkabration, rainbow, This Photo Wants to be a Poem on February 23, 2022| 39 Comments »

Welcome back to “This Photo Wants to be a Poem”. I took today’s photo on my morning walk. It was a quiet morning, but there was evidence that kids had been out playing with sidewalk chalk. Years ago I participated in a blog round-up with Betsy Hubbard of Two Writing Teachers. She called her idea “Chalkabration,” and every last Friday of the month, she encouraged teacher-bloggers to take their students outside to write chalk poems on the sidewalks. It was a favorite day for my students. I haven’t thought about it for a while, but I should definitely bring it back in the spring.

This photo qualifies as a Chalkabration. I love the simplicity of the sentence and how the child who drew it felt compelled to label the drawing. I hope you can find inspiration here, too. Write a small poem in the comments. Be sure to leave encouraging comments for other writers. Let’s have a Chalkabration!

This is a rainbow
that you can see, touch and tap
hop-scotch to the sky.
Margaret Simon, draft 2022

If you’d like to sign up for the Kidlit Progressive Poem happening in April, click here.

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This Photo wants to be a Poem

Posted in Photography, Poetry, tagged Betsy Hubbard, chalkabration, This Photo Wants to be a Poem on April 9, 2020| 17 Comments »

This week as we continue to shelter at home, I’m encouraged by the families with young children spending quality time together. My neighbors have three boys (God bless them), and they live with her parents, so their house is full. I watch through my kitchen window each night as they emerge for their evening activities of bike riding, skateboarding, and chalk drawing.

When I saw Jen’s photo of her youngest covered in chalk, I asked permission to use it here. To me, it was begging to be a poem. This low stakes writing invites you to quick-write a poem of 15 words or fewer to capture your impression of the image. Leave your poem in the comments and try to come back to comment on other poems.

Chalk-a-bration*
Barefoot is best
when creating
a sidewalk
masterpiece.
Margaret Simon, draft
*This term was started by Betsy Hubbard of the Two Writing Teachers

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Poetry Friday: Chalkabration Celebration

Posted in Chalk-a-bration, Poetry, Poetry Friday, tagged chalkabration, snow poems on January 26, 2018| 24 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up is with Carol at Beyond Literacy Link.

I love to celebrate birthdays in my classroom. Last week I asked Dawson what he wanted for his birthday celebration, expecting an answer like cupcakes, and he said, “Chalkabration!” Dawson’s only experienced one chalkabration, but he loved it.

In order to have a chalkabration, we have to write small poems. I put 5 different form choices on the board: haiku, 15 words or less, zeno, cinquain, diamante, and acrostic. The topic, of course, was ice and snow since we returned this week from a week hiatus due to an ice storm. More than ever before, my students had the experience needed to write about this topic.

Sometimes, my kids blow me away with their poetry. Austin was not willing to share in the classroom, but he did chalk his poem. Austin’s been reading books by Jason Reynolds. I feel like he channeled Jason in his poem.

In every person, their wounds may be bad.
Cold and solid, you can
Either sit and freeze or wake up and melt.

Austin, 6th grade

Cold winter nights Old melting ice Long icicles hanging from rooftops Dangling from trees are the frozen leaves. by Faith

This is my zeno poem. Zeno is a form invented by J Patrick Lewis with a syllable count of 8,4,2,1,4,2,1,4,2,1. Each one syllable rhymes.

Conditions in the clouds above
temperatures of
cold air
low
condensed to form
flutter
flow
tiny icy
crystals
snow

–Margaret Simon

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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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Early Chalkabration

Posted in Chalk-a-bration, Poetry Friday, Writing, tagged Betsy Hubbard, chalkabration, space poems on May 22, 2015| 8 Comments »

Matt is hosting today at Radio, Rhythm, & Rhyme.

Yesterday was our last day of school. I decided what better way to celebrate and send off the year than to write chalk poems. I only could round up three of my students (all boys). We started as usual by discussing a theme. Here is where my students always surprise me. I’m thinking the usual topics such as summer, end of school, May. Well, not these guys. They had outer space on their minds. So outer space it was. We each chose a topic out loud: black holes, Mars, galaxies, and stars. I couldn’t find paper (all packed up), so I pulled out sticky notes and some pens from my purse. We wrote, shared, then headed outside to chalk it up!

And to top it off, it was Betsy Hubbard’s birthday! Do you know who she is? She’s the inventor of Chalkabration. So my students added a birthday wish. Betsy usually posts a roundup of Chalkabration on the last day of the month. We’re early, but it was the last day. Check out her site on May 31st.

Galaxies by Tyler
Never ending
billions of stars
lighting up the night
different styles
amaze mankind.

Stars by Mrs. Simon

Mars by Jacob Mars is red And the only red planet Red planet Super cold!

Why did God create
this destructive force
that eats galaxies?
Why did God create
black holes?
by Matthew

Creating chalkabration
We appreciate that a lot
Happy B-day,
Mrs. Betsy!

More Poetry Goodness:

Amy Ludwig VanDerwater is gathering notebook ideas for summer. I sent in two, one from me here, and the other from my student Tyler here.

Michelle Hendrick Barnes put out a ditty challenge from Nikki Grimes. My poem was featured here.

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Celebrate March!

Posted in Celebration Saturday, Slice of Life, Teaching, tagged acrostic poetry, chalkabration, Dr. Seuss on March 7, 2015| 15 Comments »

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

SOL #7

March has come in like a lion, and I have made it through the first week of the Slice of Life Challenge. Time to celebrate!

Some of my students missed Chalkabration last week. So we made winter acrostics. Lani, 3rd grade, says she’s not a poet and yet, she used the word metamorphosized!

Metamorphosized butterfly
Arrives vividly
Rising
Caterpillar
High flying.
by Lani

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss! This is our brave librarian who dressed up every day this week as one of Dr. Seuss’s characters. We had special days to celebrate, crazy socks, crazy hair, and mismatched.

Jacob’s mother teaches across the hall from me. She occasionally texts me things he says. This text is an all time winner! My heart swells!

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Winter Chalkabration

Posted in Celebration Saturday, Chalk-a-bration, Writing, tagged chalkabration, gifted writers, winter poems on January 31, 2015| 6 Comments »

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

Join the Chalk-a-bration at Betsy Hubbard’s site Teaching Young Writers.

My students love Chalkabration, the genius child of Betsy Hubbard of The Two Writing Teachers. She invites us to celebrate poetry at the end of the month by chalking poems. Because of Thanksgiving and Christmas break, we have not chalked poems for 3 months. The excitement got us in a little trouble.

I used a poetry lesson I had made a few years ago that I happened upon in my Dropbox folder. The poems were quite sophisticated for my little ones, but my instructions were to find words of light and words of dark. I don’t want Chalkabration to turn into fluffy writing. With this work reading high-level poems, their poems were more thoughtful. I especially like that Erin, a third grader, decided to use the haiku form. Our springlike weather allowed us to go outside and chalk up the sidewalk.

By Reed, 6th grade

A haiku by Erin, 3rd grade

By Margaret Simon

It doesn’t snow here, but even so, my students drew snowflakes to symbolize winter.

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September Chalkabration

Posted in Chalk-a-bration, Digital Learning, Slice of Life, tagged chalkabration, Laura Purdie Salas, Sugarcane on September 30, 2014| 5 Comments »

Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.

Join the Chalk-a-bration at Betsy Hubbard’s site Teaching Young Writers.

I have been using Laura Purdie Salas’s blog site in my classroom. Last week we joined in her weekly photo challenge “15 Words or Less.” She posts a new photo each Thursday and invites poets to quick-write a poem.

Yesterday, I used Laura’s new series, What’s Inside, to inspire short poems for Chalkabration. I even tried my own What’s Inside poem. I am not usually a rhyme writer. It’s hard. I wanted to rhyme like Laura, so with the help of RhymeZone, I found the word quill to rhyme with still. That made me think more deeply about the way sugarcane looks. Could it be a quill? Yes, in my imagination. Don’t you love it when words work out like that? It was a high-five moment. (Teachers need them, too.)

Following the lead of Betsy Hubbard and Stacey Shubitz, two of the six teachers who write for Two Writing Teachers, I used Emaze to show off some of our poems. I am encouraging my students to try this new format for their upcoming book talks, so I wanted to experiment myself. Click on the link below to watch our chalkabration celebration.

http://app.emaze.com/825079/september-chalkabration?autoplay

What’s inside sugarcane?

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Reading and Chalking

Posted in Books, Chalk-a-bration, tagged Betsy Hubbard, chalkabration, Kevin Henkes, Marilyn Nelson on June 30, 2014| 6 Comments »

Join the Chalk-a-bration at Betsy Hubbard’s site Teaching Young Writers.

Link up with Teach Mentor Texts

Today is the last day of June and it’s Monday, so what am I reading? I’m combining two posts today. I am missing my students because Chalk-a-bration was one of their favorite days of the month. I am at the lake with my parents with no access to kids or to a sidewalk (much less a piece of chalk), so I played with my iPad and wrote a quote from one of the books I read this week, how i discovered poetry by Marilyn Nelson.

What a lovely book! Marilyn Nelson writes a memoir of growing up in the late 50’s with 50 intimate poems. Each poem is both deeply personal as well as universal. Marilyn’s father was in the military, so they moved often. Marilyn captures the feelings of being moved from place to place. I was touched by the poems dealing with having to leave their pets behind. “Daddy pulled a puppy from the pocket/ of his flight jacket, and we imprinted/ like a gosling to a goose. Speida’s my dog,/ though he’s impartially affectionate.”

Marilyn’s mother prided herself on being a First Negro. As they move from base to base, they are often the only black family. “Making History takes more than standing in line/ believing little white lies about pain./ Mama says First Negroes are History…That lady in Montgomery just became a First/ by sqwunching up her eyes and sitting there.”

This little book is an important one with a very personal, first hand account of living in the late 50’s. #WeNeedDiverseBooks: This one is going on my shelf for my students as we study memoir and history.

The Year of Billy Miller took me back to being in second grade. There is so much to love about this book. Billy is just a fun kid to be with. He wants to be brave and stay up all night but ends up in his sister’s room falling asleep with her. Billy has to write a poem and perform it in front of an audience. I enjoyed watching the development of his poem. Kevin Henkes does not make Billy Miller a brilliant writer but shows us a real boy. He has the typical feelings of a seven year old boy and his family is most important to him. This book makes you smile.

I am currently listening to Inkheart by Cornelia Funke, a great book to listen to on my long car ride home today. What are you reading?

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Chalkabration Haiku

Posted in Chalk-a-bration, Gifted Education, Poetry, Teaching, Writing, tagged chalkabration, chalku, haiku, teaching gifted on April 30, 2014| 3 Comments »

Join the Chalk-a-bration over at Teaching Young Writers.

Believe it or not, it’s the last day of April and the last day I will be posting Chalk-a-bration with this year’s bunch. I hope they will participate from home over the summer, though. My principal enjoys our chalking-up-the-sidewalks-with-poetry so much that she has asked us to decorate the walkways for the mother’s breakfast, “Muffins with Mom,” next week.

As we continue to work our way through the ABC’s of poetry, we have landed on H, and what better form to use for chalketry than haiku. We should coin the term, “Chalku.” Lots of different thoughts going on today. I was thinking about the humidity that has moved in thick and warm; the cold weather has definitely moved on. Vannisa is thinking about the end of school and summer coming. Kendall responded to music I played. I love the variety of ideas as much as the consistency of form.