Today’s Little Ditty | Reflections on the Teche

Posts Tagged ‘Today’s Little Ditty’

Nothing Happened

Posted in Gratitude, Poetry, Poetry Friday, Writing, tagged Barbara Crooker, Douglas Florian, nothing, poetry, Today's Little Ditty on January 15, 2016| 19 Comments »

Join the Poetry Friday round-up with Keri at Keri Recommends

Last week Michelle Barnes interviewed Douglas Florian who challenged poets to write a poem about nothing. On Saturday, I had a bunch of nothing much going on and I read a poem by Barbara Crooker that was about nothing and the joy of a day when nothing goes wrong. I stole a line and off I went.

with a borrowed line from Barbara Crooker, “Ordinary Life” in The Woman in this Poem selected by Georgia Heard.

This was a day when nothing happened.

I swept the floor.
Leaves piled with swirly
dust–not many left on trees

this winter day, but the sun
shone through a break in the clouds
making my gathering glisten.

I stopped to switch laundry
pulled long sleeves from the dryer.
Soft warmth brushed my cheek.

View from my kitchen window, by Margaret Simon

The dryer hummed a rhythm.
Time enough for another cup of coffee,
another deep breath of nothing happening.

I promised God to be present.
He said, “It’s all in the way you look at things.”
So I swept

words into a small pile
on a page
where nothing much was happening.

–Margaret Simon

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Wisdom of the Sea

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, tagged Deep Wisdom Poems, Joyce Sidman, Today's Little Ditty on January 16, 2015| 12 Comments »

Find more Poetry Friday with Irene at Live your Poem.

The shells went to school this week. Children are fascinated by shells. They loved picking out their own special shell to write about.

In her book Awakening the Heart, Georgia Heard writes about spinning metaphors, “Spinning metaphors and similes has the effect of spinning a kaleidoscope around to see the beautiful and multifaceted color variations.” On a clean notebook page, let’s see how many metaphors we can think of for our shells. Then we started spinning.

Wonderopolis has a number of seashell-oriented Wonders. We explored two of them: How Much is a Sand Dollar Worth? and How are Sea Shells Formed?

After enjoying the Wonders, shells, and discussion, we had a “sacred writing time.” During this time, I gave them the option to write a Deeper Wisdom poem introduced by Joyce Sidman at Today’s Little Ditty, Michelle H. Barnes.

The steps are:
1. Choose a subject. It can be anything: an ant, the Empire State Building, your father. Your poem will be called “What Does [your subject] Know?
2. Think about the greater Truths that this particular object knows, whether it is alive or not.
3. State these truths—six of them—in two stanzas, repeating your question before each stanza.
4. If you want, rhyme each final word—but this is not necessary. (Joyce Sidman)

My student Matthew met this challenge with an amazing result.

What does a seashell know?
It doesn’t know the Pythagorean Theorem
Or how to count by fives,
But it knows the ocean’s feelings.
It’s felt the sea god’s cries.
It knows it has an owner.
It knows that it’s a shield.
It has one life purpose—
to make the sea assassins yield.

By Matthew, 5th grade

I struggled with this form. Rhyme stumps me up every time. After quite a few tries, I tweaked the form a bit to write the poem I wanted to write.

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Poem Movie

Posted in Creativity, Digital Learning, Poetry Friday, Writing, tagged iMovie, poem movie, Today's Little Ditty on June 13, 2014| 9 Comments »

Poetry Friday Round-up is with Catherine Johnson.

the coming of lavender

Over at Today’s Little Ditty, Michelle H Barnes is hosting a poem movie challenge issued by her guests Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong of the Poetry Friday Anthology of Science. I love a creative challenge and since I am trying to be OPEN in the year 2014, I need to learn new things. I knew nothing about using iMovie, but I have it on my computer, so I gave it a try. This is a user friendly program. If I can do it, anyone can.

I pulled out a poem I wrote for Laura Shovan’s Pantome poem project and uploaded pictures I had in my files. I must have recorded my reading 5 times or more. That was the hardest part. What is it about doing something like this that makes you feel so smart and accomplished? I will definitely try this with my students next year. Thanks, Michelle, Sylvia, and Janet for the motivation to try something new.