Please use this button on your site for DigiLit Sunday posts
For DigiLit Sunday, I invited friends to submit flower poems for this Thinglink video. I have been working on Thinglink this summer through their teacher’s challenge. I have also been participating in the National Writing Project and Innovative Educators Making Learning Connected (CLMOOC). Thinglink offered me a preview of their video application. CLMOOC challenged us this week to think about games. Combining the two, we played with flower poems. I want to thank those who took the challenge to write a flower poem and contribute to this video: Sheri Edwards, Diane Mayr, Linda Baie, and Kaylie Bonin. Each flower poem is linked to the video. I used Tapestry to publish the poems.
Thinglink is offering to you, my readers, an early access code to Thinglink for video. First sign up for a teacher account on Thinglink. Then login to your account on video.thinglink.com This is your unique access code: tlvideo_for_reflectionsontheteche.
Head over to Teach Mentor Texts with Jen Vincent to read more reviews from the Kidlitosphere.
I made a commitment to myself and ultimately to my students to read middle grade novels this summer. I want to channel Donalyn Miller and become a Wild reader. I am reading her second book Reading in the Wild. This is what she says about her own reading life.
I cannot imagine a day without reading in it. I am a better teacher because I read. I pass books into my students’ hands and talk with them about what they read. I model what a reading life looks like and show my students how reading enriches my life and can enrich theirs, too. –Donalyn Miller, Reading in the Wild
The Lightning Dreamer by Margarita Engle: I first met Margarita when she was featured on Caroline Starr Rose’s blog and had a bookmark giveaway. Shortly after, I received a sweet email from her asking the names of my students and sent us all a personally signed bookmark. I felt guilty, thought, because I had not read any of her books. Now I am remedying that. The Lightning Dreamer is a verse novel in the voice of Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda, known as Tula. Interspersed are verses from her dedicated brother and cook, her disappointed and misguided mother, and the nuns who value her independent spirit. I am intrigued that a novel written in so few words can carry along a plot and work deeply on theme. The Lightning Dreamer was full of heart and soul. It is this heart and soul that makes you feel how Gertrudis felt and come to truly understand the oppression of women and the world of slavery in Cuba in the early 1800s.
Here is a recent interview with Margarita Engle on Author Turf.
Click image for Margarita Engle’s website
Renee LaTulippe of No Water River featured selections from the novel. No Water River continues to be a wealth of poetry goodness.
Link to Irene Latham’s blog site: Live Your Poem
The Sky Between Us by Irene Latham: Irene generously contacted me to trade poetry books. I was so honored that she would want to do this. She is another wonderful cyberfriend. The connections I have made through joining this kidlit blogging world are amazingly generous and supportive.
The Sky Between Us is a collection of poems that began as a manuscript for young readers inspired by the National Park Systems Historic Places collection. From there it grew into an adult collection of Irene’s perspective on her One Little Word for 2013, “sky.” This is a collection I will share with my middle grade students. The poems are written in short free verse stanzas often using enjambment to lead the reader through the words like a canoe on a winding river.
Irene has a gift for language that makes her words roll over your tongue and into your mind where you breathe out, “Ah!” Her observance of nature resonates with me and leads me to a deeper understanding of the world and creation. I will visit her poems again and again.
Poetry Friday Round-up is with Tabatha Yeatts at The Opposite of Indifference
Poetry can take you to unexpected places. This was my experience with writing a Pantoum. The form seems simple, yet it complicates things. The form is made up of 4-line stanzas. The second and fourth lines of the first quatrain become the first and third lines of the second, and this pattern continues. Often the last line repeats the first; although, mine did not. Poetry forms can both confine the writer and free her. In my experience, the rhymes confined me, yet the message I thought I was making changed with the writing.
A writing group friend gave me a book this week, One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp. It drew me in immediately. Her writing style is fresh. She writes with intelligence and honesty. I took a line from her second chapter, “How I wrestle with last night’s dream,” and then looked at notes from my meditation journal. I thought I would write about God as a loving center. The poem, however, seems more about my love, my husband, and his ever present trust in my life. You never know where a poem may lead. Sometimes we just have to follow.
How I wrestle with last night’s dream.
The words have all been said before,
nothing new, what can they mean,
written on the stone of this cold floor?
The words have all been said before.
I reach for your open hand so near
writing my love on the stone cold floor
words to erase my fear.
I reach for your open hand so near
like a child reaches for her mother.
Words will erase my fear
with trust in honesty and one another.
Like a child reaching for her mother,
I recognize that look on your face
with trust in honesty and one another,
open to your willing embrace.
Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.
I’m taking a break from the ABC’s of poetry to take you to a room. On Saturday at the Acadiana Center for the Arts, Valentine Pierce, a performance poet from New Orleans, presented a workshop for Acadiana Wordlab. She is a force in a room. She performed a few of her poems and had me rapping out the beats of my words as I tapped the pen to the page. For one of her prompts, she asked us to write about the room we were in. When I first walked into the room, Clare and three other women were wearing red. I commented, “I didn’t get the memo to wear red.” And then Clare introduced Valentine. So thus began my poem about the room.
A glance around the corner at the boardroom. ChipperHatter Architects
This Room is for Writing
I did not wear red today
to honor sweet Valentine.
I am wearing green
like the peridot of my birthstone.
I didn’t expect to give birth today
here in this blood-red chair
that pushes back on my shoulder slump.
Sit up, girl, and write a poem!
Shout it out like the rockets
speeding off the racetrack of the wall.
Lay your life down on the black boardroom table.
Place your heart on the frosted glass.
No one will mind if you cry a little.
They are crying, too,
for their children, their crazy aunts,
and for that empty beige wall
waiting for someone’s art
splattered in paint,
dripping down to the carpet
under our rock hard feet.
We stand sure;
All of us together
know that I will not be shamed
for not wearing red.
–Margaret Simon, all rights reserved
Please check the progress of the Progressive Poem in the right bar. I am coming up in 2 days!
Poetry Friday Round-up is at Today’s Little Ditty.
For National Poetry Month, Chris Lehman has invited teacher/poets to join together to read, listen, and discuss poetry. Chris posed this question to the group, “Why Poetry?” Inspired by Kevin Hodgson, I tried out Tapestry for my response. Click on the link to view my response.
Earlier in the week, I posted about my writing life responding to fellow blogger/writer Sandra Sarr’s questions. I am From poems have been around for a while and are written in many middle grade classrooms. But I wanted to take a different spin on the I am From and write about where my writing life comes from.
I am from a short story contest in tenth grade.
I won for my row.
I am from Dear Diary, “I want to be a writer
if only someone would give me the confidence.”
I am from “Where is Papa going with that ax?”
to “Blue is cackling something awful this morning.”
from Children’s Literature class to
the National Writing Project Teacher Institute.
I am from retreats, marathons, and critique groups
holding me accountable to find an authentic voice
and make writing a daily practice.
I am from pen to paper,
fingers to keyboard,
opening my veins and bleeding
my words,
trusting them to
the world.
Slice of Life Day 25. Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.
Driving down the road,
I stop to praise the wildflowers
guarding the gully
like yellow-billed soldiers.
I praise your sensible size,
clustered in God’s bouquet,
open to the arrival of bees,
spreading the wings of spring.
Your beauty is the first swamp color,
popping up in winter’s wake.
A glorious butterweed ribbon
unbounded, blowing in the fresh breeze.
Even with your death, you feed us,
such is the circle of life,
from compost to crawfish,
trapped, boiled, and Cayenne-peppered,
just in time for Good Friday Feasts.
Slice of Life Day 21. Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.
Poetry Friday Round-up is at The Drift Record
I am constantly amazed by my gifted students. They can process and learn at such a rapid rate. I love words. That’s no secret. They know it. So we often spend time talking about words.
Vannisa, a 4th grader, and I are reading A Snicker of Magic together. (Actually, she has passed me up.) I asked her to put some of the magical words on the board. She made a list including felicity, serendipity, paradigm, gargantuan, spendiddly, snicker-doodle, lickety-split. Aren’t these great words?
I pulled up a poem that Katie Muhtaris posted on her blog Coffee Fueled Musings to show her students how to use strong verbs. Her poem, Oreos, inspired Vannisa to write about cookies.
Chewy Cookies
Stretching for the red box it slumbers in,
peel off the wrapper
decant a glass of milk into the tall transparent cup.
Let the flow of white water dive into the pool of air.
Snatch a crispy golden cookie.
Devour the serendipity.
Taste the felicity of the snicker-doodle.
–Vannisa, age 10
Matthew, otherwise known as Magic Matt on our class blog, took a break from his magic tricks to write a poem. He didn’t know it was good. He told me, “Don’t post this anyWHERE.” Then I read it and said, “Wow!”
Matt said, “Mrs. Simon, did you just say Wow about one of my poems?”
I think you will say Wow! too.
Felicity
Felicity fills my soul,
warming my heart like a gargantuan fire.
Isolated mountains dot the Earth
like looking through a kaleidoscope.
A paradigm of God’s grandest creation meeting reality.
Slice of Life Day 14. Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.
Join the Poetry Friday Round up at Rogue Anthropologist
Today, I am featuring a new and upcoming poet, Kaylie. She was my student for 3 years. This year she is in middle school, but she has joined the class as we participate in the Slice of Life Story Classroom Challenge. Her mother teaches across the hall from me. She came in one day earlier this week and said, “Thank you.” She told me that Kaylie has not been writing much at school this year, and she forgot how much she loves it. She now comes home every day and goes straight to the computer to write her Slice of the day. Kaylie is a poet. She has an amazing sense of language for her 13 years.
Now she has returned in spirit as a leader to the others. She is lifting lines and writing poems. In her slice yesterday, she wrote, “I don’t know why I am ADDICTED to writing lift a lines. I guess this is just a great way to make someone else feel good because you like their writing.” Kevin Hodgson has started something. He stopped by yesterday and left a poem response. And, yes, as Kaylie said, “It made me feel good.”
Wordle made by Kaylie
Her feelings come and go
As quickly as leaves fall
In the brisk autumn months.
Her spirit will always be with the earth.
If you are quiet, you can hear her heart thumping, thumping,
Dancing to the beat of the cicada song,
Steady and slow, on time
You can see her eyes, the stars
That glitter in the twilight,
Inconsistent as the moon.
She is restless,
In the ocean that crashes toward shore,
Always there, always churning
To the gull’s cry, to the burning sand,
She is present.
In the winter, her heart is cold as ice
Her heart thumps slow, quiet, soft
The snow falls, her whispers
Her secrets that we catch on our tongue
Only to be melted away.
In the spring, she is generous.
It is a time for life and rebirth,
She lets her children frolic among the daisies
In the sweet breeze she blows.
She is everywhere, she is invisible.
She is the Earth.
Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge!
My students write reader responses each week to whatever book they are reading. At the beginning of the year, I placed some questions in their binders to prompt these responses. I find that week after week, they select the same questions to answer.
A few weeks ago, I read Dana Murphy’s post on Two Writing Teachers about reader responses. She wrote about three different strategies she teaches her students, lifting a line, character maps, and visual note-taking. I posted these ideas on our class blog and have discussed each strategy with my students.
I love the connections I can make with authors online. I follow Nikki Grimes on Facebook, so I saw a post about her talk on Booktalk Nation (which, sadly, I had to miss) along with the opportunity to purchase a signed copy of Words with Wings. The book arrived last week. Vannisa is a fan of verse novels and picked it up immediately. She decided to lift a line to write her own poem about the main character. When I talked to Vannisa about her poem, she told me she was interested in how the character herself was also just words on the page.
I know a girl
who waits and listens.
For her daydreams,
she awaits.
Who comes from
a family
that doesn’t
daydream.
Waiting
for words
to take her
high into the sky
or her mind.
Another week into the nerdlution and I’m falling behind in one of my promises to myself. Exercise! Ugh! It’s always a challenge for me to fit. it. in. And the cold weather hasn’t helped. But this week has been better; I made it to Curves Monday and Wednesday mornings, Yoga class on Tuesday, and Zydeco dance lessons on Wednesday night. I’m even feeling a little sore. Learning to do the alligator walk does a job on your calves.
My attention to my OLW Open is working out pretty well. I try to attend the Acadiana Wordlab each week. On Saturday, the workshop leaders were two young actresses from an Improvisation Group, Silverbacks Improv Theatre. These girls were amazing actresses! We played the craziest games. In one of the games, we each added a line to a story; In another, we could only add one word. I participated even though I felt absolutely ridiculous and totally out of my comfort zone. As always in Wordlab, the writing was unique to the writer and wonderful.
And that leads me to my third nerdlution: writing every day. This has been easy with Laura Shovan’s daily color prompts. At her site, Author Amok, she is posting different color swatches from Pantone colors to prompt poetry. If we send her our poems, she posts them the next day. I have been feeling so famous all week as she daily posts one of my poems and tags me on Twitter and Facebook. Some other blog-friends are playing along, too. (Linda Baie and Diane Mayr) Please take a look at her post for today as it features one of my poems from my book Illuminate.
Let the nerdlution continue. Thanks to Michelle Haseltine for hosting the nerdlution round up every Thursday. Click here to read more.
Margaret Simon lives on the Bayou Teche in New Iberia, Louisiana. She teaches gifted elementary students, writes poetry and children's books. Welcome to a space of peace, poetry, and personal reflection. Walk in kindness.
Reflections on the Teche 