haiku | Reflections on the Teche

Posts Tagged ‘haiku’

Retreat Mondo

Posted in Poetry, Slice of Life, tagged Bonne Terre Cottage, Chere' Coen, haiku, mondo, Overgram on April 22, 2014| 7 Comments »

Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.

Spring break is here, and I am on retreat. My good friend Jen owns a cottage in Breaux Bridge, Bonne Terre Cottage, and she invited me to come stay as long as I want. Her generous spirit has led me to the “good earth.” Up early, watching the birds, listening to sounds of nature led to a mondo, a form of haiku that is a call and response. My friend and fellow writer Chere Coen is sitting on the porch with her camera, ready to capture whatever bird will let her. I took pictures with my phone and used Overgram to create the image-poem.

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Origami Poetry

Posted in Poetry Friday, Teaching, tagged fibonacci poem, haiku, origami on April 18, 2014| 11 Comments »

Join the Poetry Friday round-up is hosted today by Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge.

My celebration of National Poetry Month with my students has been interrupted many times by testing, field trips, and now spring break, but this week I had a few days to work with my youngest students, grades 1-3, on origami and poetry.

In a teacher workshop last week, I learned how to make an origami fox. I brought the activity to my little ones and we wrote Fib poems about foxes. A Fib poem follows a syllable count that corresponds to the first 6 numbers of the Fibonacci series, 1,1,2,3,5,8.

Here is Erin’s. She put her origami fox in a snow scene and made the poem appear in a flip-open book.

Origami fox in snow

Fib poem by Erin.

On Thursday, we made origami envelopes, read I Haiku You, and wrote love haiku. Some favorite teachers are going to be very happy.

Best teacher ever
makes origami poems
shine in the classroom.

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Haiku is here

Posted in Poetry, Teaching, tagged Butchart Gardens, Diane Mayr, haiku, Laura Shovan, source poems on April 10, 2014| 8 Comments »

Butchart Gardens vintage postcard, Victoria, B.C., Canada. Photo by John L. Barnard

Once again the postcards Laura Shovan sent me, along with Pantone colors, inspire my writing. This postcard shows the Rose Garden at Butchart Gardens in Victoria, B.C., Canada. The postcard states that the gardens were once an abandoned quarry. A quick Google search found that they are still blooming today, “over 100 years in bloom.”

Butchart Garden Haiku

Red fiesta blaze
arching overhead, a wreath
crowns this sanctuary.

–Margaret Simon, all rights reserved

On Laura’s blog, writers are sharing their source poems. Diane Mayr wrote about the haiku in this post.

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C is for Collaboration

Posted in Poetry Friday, Teaching, Writing, tagged couplet, haiku, Kevin Hodgson, line lifting, Michelle Haseltine, notegraphy on April 4, 2014| 12 Comments »

Poetry Friday Round-up is at The Poem Farm.

Some days don’t go as planned. As you know, I am trying to do a poem a day using ABCs of styles, forms, and techniques. For Day 3, letter C, we got so wrapped up in book talks that we had little time left for writing.

As we reviewed the results of Round 4 on MMPoetry, we found the words for the final round. Incontinent, kerfuffle, confabulation, and defenestrate. After discussion, collaboration led to a haiku using the word defenestration. I showed my students this new app I learned about from Kevin Hodgson and Michelle Haseltine, Notegraphy. It works well for a collaborative haiku.

The line lifter lurked on my students’ blogs and left some cool response poems. The kids were so excited that their poems had been hacked! Thanks, Kevin.

Me –
the mold on the wall,
sticks to you like thoughts in your head
that you can’t ever shake loose
or clean with a swipe
or maybe I am more like a poem
that one shares on the Web
which then whispers melodies of meaning in your ear
all day.

– Mr. Hodgson
Sixth Grade Teacher
Norris Elementary School
aka, the line lifter
🙂

Kaylie stopped by our class blog and saw no poems using the letter C. That didn’t stop her from contributing. She wrote a beautiful couplet about pelicans.

The pelican flies out towards dawn
Past the orange sunrise and so on

They travel in pairs across the sky
When the bayou has gone bone dry

They long for the feel of the wet on their feathers
The bayou is where their hearts are tethered

The pelican flies out towards dawn
Past the orange sunrise… on and on and on…
–Kaylie, all rights reserved

Please click on over to Caroline Starr Rose’s blog where I am the guest writer. My post is more about anaphora.

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Celebrating Love

Posted in Celebration Saturday, Poetry, tagged Betsy Snyder, haiku, love poetry, Valentine's Day on February 15, 2014| 6 Comments »

This was a week of feeling the love. and spreading love. Here’s how we did it.

1. Valentines for the elderly: I co-sponsor a leadership group at my base school, Paw Pride. These students decided last week that they wanted to make Valentines for the elderly, so we had two recess crafting sessions, created original Valentines, and delivered them after school on Thursday to a local subsidized housing facility for elderly. The students who came were filled with love and joy as they talked with the residents. A few of them expressed to me how surprised they were at the fun they had. They want to go back at Easter.

Emily’s haiku to the moon

2. Writing Love Haiku: On Friday, I decided to forego a math lesson with my youngest group of students and teach them about haiku. (I guess you could argue that counting syllables is math.) I read to them Betsy Snyder’s precious book, I Haiku You. This was their first experience with haiku. In the 10 minute writing time, a few of them wrote up to 4 haiku poems. Then they illustrated them. The feeling of pride and joy in their writing was heartwarming.

3. Love Poetry Night: Not a huge crowd, less than 20, listened to love poetry Friday night. I read my own poem and a Jane Hirschfeld poem, For What Binds Us, and choked up at the end. “how the black cord makes of them a single fabric/ that nothing can tear or mend.”
Jim recited Rumi. Phanat sang us a French love song. Clare and Bonny both made us tear up with their touching poems. Love is just like that sometimes, touches the heart.

I hope you were touched by some love this week. Join the celebration over at Ruth’s blog, Discover.Play.Build.

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Chalking Out the Old Year

Posted in Blogging, Chalk-a-bration, Writing, tagged chalkabration, haiku, New Year on December 31, 2013| 3 Comments »

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

My students did not want to miss the Dec. 31st year end Chalk-a-bration, so on the last day of classes on Friday, Dec. 20th, we wrote year end poems. Some of them became too long for chalking, so they posted on our kidblog. I tried out a chalkboard app. Not sure if it is the best chalkboard app, but it was free.

Tyler borrowed a line from Naomi Shihab Nye to start his poem and drew it on our chalkboard contact paper.

“Goodbye 2013” by Tyler with a line from “Burning the Old Year,” by Naomi Shihab Nye

Year End Haiku by Margaret Simon

Where we have grown has disappeared
nothing is impossible
anything can happen
12 days till New Years
12 days of Christmas
12 months of Chalkabration
going by too fast
but slowly
every second counts
its all happening
nothing stops
running on a non stop trail of a timeline
crossing the border by the second of the clock

by Vannisa

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The Calm Before…

Posted in Slice of Life, tagged Christmas, haiga, haiku on December 24, 2013| 8 Comments »

Join the Tuesday Slice of Life!

As many of you know, I write a Slice of Life every Tuesday. Usually I write it on Sunday because my weeks are full of lesson plans, school, meetings, errands… But this weekend I finished up the Christmas preparations. Yesterday, I ran errands. So this morning I am sitting in my warm kitchen with my dog Charlie on my lap, knowing that soon we will all be in here, my husband, my daughters, and me, cooking up a storm. I will attempt to make my mother’s dressing for tomorrow’s dinner. Jeff will be making a gumbo for tonight’s Christmas Eve celebration, and Martha will make lemon squares. But at this moment, I am having a quiet cup of coffee and listening to the calm.

Christmas is a wonderful time of year, but it can also be stressful. Even when I try to keep it low stress, stress creeps its ugly head in at some point or another. Yesterday, it came to me while I drove through CVS. I drove into the wrong lane, the drop off lane. I yelled at the poor clerk, “Was there a sign to tell me I couldn’t pick up here!”

Later I returned. No, I didn’t circle around and try again. I left. But the errand had to be done, so I tried again when I was calmer. The sign could not have been bigger on the overhang. On the left, Pick Up, and on the right, Drop Off Only. What an idiot! I smiled at the clerk and wished her a Merry Christmas. And I learned a lesson.

I hope your day today is free of stress, mixed with calm and chaos, and full of love.

Christmas Haiga. Photo by Michelle Zimmerman

Christmas Haiga by Margaret Simon. Photo by Michelle Zimmerman

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Chalk-u

Posted in Poetry, Teaching, tagged chalkabration, haiku, student work on June 30, 2013| 5 Comments »

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

Betsy, a kindergarten teacher and fellow blogger, is hosting a round up of chalketry, poetry in chalk, at her monthly Chalkabration. On the last day of Write your Way youth writing camp a few weeks ago, we wrote haiku in chalk or chalku for the parents to read as they walked to the classroom for Author’s Chair. Here’s a sampling.

Flowers in a bush
Fresh cut grass under my feet
What a pleasant smell!
by Kaylie

Roses are in bloom
Bees buzz around the garden
All is peaceful
–Anna

Shadows dapple, splayed
beneath the crooked oak’s arms
Swaying though untouched
–Collin

Trees blow in the wind
Growing and growing until
They all pass away
–Jered

Shadows move slow
and birds tweet quiet
I write in the shade.
Kylon

A shady oak tree.
The perfect place on a hot day
A cool breeze blowing its leaves
By Lily

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Gratiku

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, tagged gratiku, haiku, Happiness, nature poetry, Shawn Achor, tanka, Ted Talks on April 20, 2013| 1 Comment »

Poetry Friday is hosted this week by Irene Latham at Live your Poem.

My sister-in-law sent me a Ted Talk video of Shawn Achor, “The Happiness Advantage: Linking Positive Brains to Performance.” I watched the whole thing. He is a good speaker, engaging and funny, so I recommend you watch it, too. I was wondering, though, if he would ever get to an answer. Sometimes people can easily identify a problem, but lack any real advice for a resolution. However, Shawn Achor had an answer. And an easy one at that. Make these 5 small changes to create more happiness in your life.

1) 3 Gratitudes
2) Journaling
3) Exercise
4) Meditation
5) Random Acts of Kindness

So today, I exercised (walked my dog) and thought about 3 gratitudes. Since it is National Poetry Month and I am trying to write a poem every day, I turned my gratitudes into gratiku, haiku about gratitude. I want to thank Diane Mayr at Random Noodling for introducing the superstickies site to me. The third gratiku became a tanka and wouldn’t fit on a stickie, so I used the app Overgram.

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Azaleas Popping

Posted in Poetry, Slice of Life, tagged azaleas, haiku on March 12, 2013| 5 Comments »

Azaleas in my front yard

Sunday night it rained all night. And I slept poorly between the gutters clanking and my storm-scared dog barking. But when I drove home from school on Monday afteroon, the sun was shining, the breeze was blowing, and the azaleas were bright all over town. I think this calls for a spring haiku.