Today’s #verselove prompt was offered by Shaun who introduced a Bukowski poem that was all about you taking care of you–or at least that was what I took away from it. It led me to thinking about all the ways we, as teachers, often do not take care of ourselves, which then led me to think about how little things can make a big difference.
So, here goes!
Do it for You
On days that feel like weeks and months
it’s the little things that matter
an early morning walk dodging snails and letting dew drops
give you that magical sparkle
even when it’s hard to get out of bed
a stop by the local coffee shop on the way home
for that expensive coffee (decaf of course)
that transports you to a place that is quiet and calm
and just the right kind of warm, the kind that feels like a hug
I’ve been inspired by Grant Snider’s comics for a while now and was super excited when I learned about his book Poetry Comics published at the end of March. (I wrote a mini review here). I knew I would be doing something inspired by his poetry comics with my first grade students this month. When I saw he had done a Haiku comic style, I knew this would be a perfect format for my students.
We’ve written Haiku this year–well, mostly 3-line poems without much attention to the syllable count. So when we took a look at Grant’s Haikomic this morning, students immediately understood (and recognized the metaphorical thinking in his last line).
I’ve learned when teaching first graders that sometimes a novel paper use can propel young writers forward, somehow tricking that treacherous writer’s block into disappearing. So instead of writing in their notebooks or on lined paper, I handed each student a 3″ square post-it note to draft their Haiku. It didn’t take long for students to have their Haiku ready to be transformed by the comic making process.
I distributed the comic paper–in this case, a page with three horizontal rectangular panels. Students wrote one line of their Haiku in each panel and added their comic drawing with colored pencil. As a final last step, they traced over the writing with a Sharpie marker.
Here are a few examples:
V can never help writing about violets!
M is obsessed with basketball!
In her piece, “I” decided to add speech bubbles.
And O celebrated flowers and springtime
While I wrote my Haiku about egrets with my students and drew along with them, later this afternoon with a group of Writing Project colleagues we crafted our Haikomics using photos instead of drawing (mostly due to severe time constraints). I then used Canva to write my Haiku directly onto my photo.
Maybe you’ll want to try your hand at a Haikomic too. I’d love to see what you come up with!
Today Dave over at #verselove introduced me to a new poetry format called Kwansaba. This format depends of sevens: seven lines, each line with seven words, all words seven letters or less, and the poem should be one of praise. (For more details read the #verselove post linked above) Here is my attempt:
Some days writing feels hard. Even when there is an interesting prompt, there are days when the words seem to be hiding. This has been one of those days for me.
With Angie’s invitation at #verselove, I used Clint Smith’s poem, No More Elegies Today to frame my poem, to get me started. Maybe this is one of those pieces I will return to on another day and find my way to another place with it.
Today I will Write a Poem
Today I will write a poem about writing
It will not dwell in the challenges of deciding on a topic
or the many chores that suddenly need my attention (instead of writing)
It will not illuminate the scribbled out words
or the dead end paths started but not followed
Instead
It will be a poem about how writing can be
the rainbow that colored my way to work this morning
reframing a Monday with scarlets, tangerines, indigos, and violets
It will use words as shovels and hoes
digging up the rich loam of meaning
sowing the possibility of a seed taking root
It will take me out of my writing funk long enough
A brain dump. That’s what Barbara asked us to do as part of the #verselove poetry prompt for today. And I don’t think I followed the rules at all. Maybe my poem isn’t a poem at all or maybe it is an 100 word prose poem or even a manifesto in the making. Whatever it is, it was fun to write. There might be some more there there.
Teachers and Unicorns
They tell me I’m a unicorn. A serious person who believes that learning should be fun–should be real. Experiences immersive: audio, visual, tactile, numerical, connected. Classroom walls don’t contain learning. A serious person who believes that play is essential. For children in and out of school and for adults too. That reading and writing and math and science are all opportunities for play and playfulness. School is a place for making–friends, memories, art, poems… Where processes are more important than products and where kids matter. I’m a teaching unicorn who’s serious about the joy of learning. We need more unicorns.
What do you need right now? That was the question Amber over at #verselove asked today. While she suggested some fanciful supplies, I couldn’t get my current favorite pen out of my head. So today is a sort of ode to my pen.
I think this was the first day in my long teaching career that I have ever taught during a solar eclipse. Unfortunately, this wasn’t a total eclipse in our area, but still an eclipse. And on this first day back from Spring Break, we were fortunate. All our of classes were supplied with eclipse viewing glasses…so why not turn the day into an eclipse-centric science phenomenon-based day of learning?
Even before the eclipse began (around 10am our time) we reviewed what we had learned about solar eclipses before our break by watching and listening to a song called “Total Eclipse of the Sun” by PBS kids. I did remind students that we were not going to see totality, but the energy in the classroom was rising. We took our first peek at the sun shortly before recess. With glasses in place, we looked up and could see right away that our usually round sun had a big bite right out of it! From that moment, these first graders were hooked.
After recess, I set up the livestream so that we could keep track of the eclipse for those places in the path of totality and we headed outside with our solar glasses to view the partial eclipse progress about every ten minutes, coming in to sketch and document the time after each viewing.
Totality, even via livestream was exhilarating! “The diamond ring!” they shouted as we watched the sun just about disappear. Four minutes of “nighttime” passed so quickly and then we watched the sun reappear. And just when students thought there was nothing more to notice about our partial eclipse, one more viewing before we headed out for lunch revealed that the “bite” of the sun had changed sides!
And no day of science learning would be complete without adding in some art and writing. After lunch we tried our hand at creating our own eclipses using oil pastels and a masking technique. Students were encouraged to use some artistic license with color–and enjoyed creating these colorful coronas.
Inspired by a poem from the book Welcome to the Wonder House by Rebecca Kai Dotlich made up of all questions, students took a first try at crafting a question poem about their eclipse experience. While we ran out of time before we really had time to finish, here is an early look at a first grade question poem by F.
The Solar Eclipse
When is the next solar eclipse?
Can America have a full eclipse?
Who can track the eclipse?
Can someone see the eclipse from inside an airplane?
Why do we have the moon come in front of the sun on special days?
When was the last eclipse?
When I look up at the moon at night I see a smile on it, but why?
For my own poem, I turned the #verselove Zip Poem prompt into an eclipse teaching poem using my school zip code (and using emoji’s as suggested for the zeros). Thanks for the inspiration Mo!
Zip Poem: Teaching Under the Influence of a Partial Eclipse
9-Solar science eclipsing school day, igniting first grade wonder
2-Planetary alignment
0-☀️
0-🌙
7-Young astronomers’ energy fueling totality-free sky learning
Some days poetry is about big ideas and big emotions and other days poetry is about…taffy!
Today’s prompt suggested a Tanka–a five line poem that has a (suggested) syllable pattern of 5-7-5-7-7 where James over at #verselove suggests we use it to express a moment where life felt wonderful, peaceful, or perfect. Not so sure that eating candy actually qualifies, but then again, why not?
Thinking Through My Lens 