Tag Archives: first grade

A Yes Day: NPM26 #29

Leave a reply

For a whole month we have been reading and writing poetry in my first grade classroom. Poetry is not specific to April in our classroom, but the intensity increases as we participate in National Poetry Month. Yesterday we read some of the poems from the book, If I Could Choose a Best Day: Poems of Possibility, noticing that all the poems start with the word “if.” We focused our attention on the poem that book is titled for, noting the kind of information the poet included.

After the reading and the talking, priming the pump for these young poets, they opened their notebooks and began to write. I asked them to start with the word if…but the topic could be anything. I encouraged the use of metaphor, action, color, and senses, but didn’t require any particular approach. If students were stuck, I pointed them back to the beginning, “If I could choose the best day…”

There is something about this poem, written by a 7 year old that inspires me. And the young poet was so excited about the “unusual metaphor.” (If you missed it, it is the part about blowing up.)

If I could choose a best day

I would choose a yes day

My mom would say yes to everything

I would be so happy

I think I would blow up!

I love the rhythm of those first two lines…and the idea of that “yes day” sounds amazing. I asked the poet if he’d had a yes day, but no, it was something that came out of thinking about a best day.

I can’t get the idea of a yes day out of my mind. So I let some words pour into a poem of my own, inspired by this one written by a first grader. Maybe it’s a call to courage for myself. Here’s my unedited draft:

Say yes

to something that scares you

that makes your heart pound

and your breath catch

say yes

to an adventure

you couldn’t imagine

last week

last year

Will you jump from a plane

hike a hidden canyon

dance on a bridge

or sing outside the shower?

Say yes

today

tomorrow

right now

@kd0602

If you could choose a best day…or have a yes day, what would it be?

Instructions Ignored: NPM26 #28

2 Replies

Some people are genius at following directions. Me, not so good. And the first graders in my care, they take a sideways route. Today’s Verselove prompt was about instructions for writing poetry. That made me think about the way students often start with energy and ideas that seemingly evaporate just when it’s time to begin writing. Luckily, more often than not, they are able to grab those vaporized ideas and allow them to condensate onto the page once the pencil begins to work its magic.

How First Graders Write a Poem or Instructions Ignored

Start with a puzzled look

To keep your teacher on her toes

Then burst into talking

About anything and everything 

Redirected and reminded

Consider action

Add in metaphorical thinking 

Don’t forget your senses 

and a sprinkle of color

Open your notebook

Draw a blank…let all those ideas

Vanish, evaporate, disappear

Pick up your pencil

Trust the magic

Delight in your own ideas 

Push past the spelling worries

Until that poem

Blooms

Delight in your words 

Read them to your classmates

And smile in satisfaction

@kd0602

Playing with Poetry: NPM26 #18

1 Reply

I’m always looking for ways that my students can experience the play of poetry, encouraging them to take some risks and express those surprises deep in their imaginations. I have a few tried and true practices that I use year to year like poetry dice and poetry comics. But like my students, I love a bit of novelty, so when I come across a promising new tool or practice, I’m all over it.

One of my colleagues recently introduced me to Ouisi Nature, a set of 210 stunning photo cards of plants, animals, and other natural formations. cropped in interesting ways. Some are extreme close ups, some are super cute animals, some are patterns that leave you guessing. The cards are meant to encourage connections between cards, allowing people to establish categories to sort the photos into.

I introduced my first grade students to these cards as an opportunity to play. In small groups they examined cards, talked about the cards, noticed details, and started sorting them into categories. They enjoyed the photos and puzzled over what some of the photos represented. The next day, I brought the cards out again. This time, I asked students to pick three photos and use them as inspiration for a poem.

Some students were worried at first. I left lots of room–and sometimes all that room just feels scary. I encouraged them to use their imaginations and not worry if the photo was actually what they thought of when they looked at the image. And after a few false starts, poems began to emerge.

S wrote about flowers and also began experimenting with line breaks.

Small Flowers but Mighty

Small purple flowers growing like pople

waking up in the morning with a yawn

flowers will get pollinated by bees and insects

Some flowers might be small but

a lot of them are mighty

P struggled a bit, feeling frustrated by feeling like instead of writing a poem it was story that appeared on the page. But perseverance paid off with this beauty.

Glittering eyes like a black sun

shining in the sky with reflections

from down below

H went in the science direction with maximum energy.

Blue energy dots like the sun

charging us all up so blue so read powerful

like waves CRASHING on to the ocean

L’s poem took me back to my recent Hawaii trip.

Hawaii

Hawaiian flowers dance like hula dancers bringing joy

and happiness to others making more and more people

happy

And yes, of course I wrote with my students! I’m not sure I got finished, but I love that the photos took me in a direction I don’t think I would have found on my own.

How do you encourage playfulness with poetry and writing with your students or with yourself? Feel free to share lessons, ideas, and resources in the comments!

Questions and Answers: NPM26 #4

2 Replies

What’s your job?

No matter who asks:

     doctor

     cashier

     insurance agent

     random stranger in the elevator 

I answer

     teacher

What grade?

The standard follow-up.

First grade

The inevitable unchanging single syllable 4-letter response is

Cute

They can be. 

They’re also:

feisty and opinionated 

timid and uncertain 

liars and painfully honest

hilarious and NOT!

surprising and predictable 

constant conundrums

consumingly curious

cautiously certain

ferociously feral

frustrating

funny

fabulous 

They learn 

even when they’re trying not to 

mostly they sink their teeth 

(the ones that aren’t falling out)

into your heart

and never let go. 

That’s my job. 

What’s yours?

Spring, the First Grade Version

2 Replies

On this first day of spring (or is actually the 4th day of summer?), I shared Raymond Souster’s poem aptly titled, “Spring” with the first graders in my class. I could hear them murmuring…that’s not a poem, it’t too short! This poem, made up of two short sentences, was perfect for this last day of parent conference week.

Our typical process with a weekly poem is that I read it aloud first, then students repeat the lines of the poem after me, and then they contribute what they have noticed. Today with this lovely short poem (maybe as short as our winter), I invited students to volunteer to read the poem aloud. So many volunteer readers at this time of the year, we heard the poem in voice after voice. (It’s about rain and roots meeting in a flower). Students noticed the two stanzas, the two sentences, a few even counted out the words. They recognized the science in the first stanza and the metaphor in the second. They even pointed out some phonics-related vowel patterns in the words. They illustrated the poem and added it to their ever growing poetry anthology.

After recess I asked them to write a description of spring using metaphorical thinking. Actually, we had practiced some of these orally earlier in the day, and they were so confident then that I asked them to write three metaphors for spring (on the hopes that they would be varied and more interesting as they pushed past their first attempt). I handed them each a large index card and asked them to write their metaphors. A calm settled, and of course a few students asked if they could write more than three.

I’m counting this as a success when not a single student expressed doubt or mystery about what I was asking them to do…and that everyone easily wrote more than one spring-inspired metaphor. I collected their metaphors and picked one from each child to produce a collaborative Spring Is… metaphor poem.

And on yesterday’s neighborhood walk I couldn’t resist stopping to take a photo of this flower beginning to unfurl–a metaphor of spring in a photo for me!

What would you contribute to this collaborative metaphorical collection about spring?

Unexpected

Leave a reply

Yesterday I wrote about my moist and cool foggy walk on the beach, today was like whiplash. Clear and twenty degrees warmer meant the beach felt like summer. At almost 7pm it is still in the low 80s! (Thinking of all my friends not on the west coast who are dealing with storms and cold temperatures!). None of this is normal or expected. While spring breakers are loving it, I’m not convinced this is a good thing.

As we meandered along the shore I noticed a grasshopper perched on an abandoned piece of surfboard leash. What? Grasshoppers are not usual beach inhabitants. I leaned in close, trying to get a grasshopper portrait without making it leap away. I wanted to get close enough to see details and not capture that blur that happens when the focus and distance don’t line up. After a few tries, I got this unexpected shot.

I was feeling a bit uncertain about how this St. Patrick’s Day would go, especially when my students greeted me this morning with tales of leprechaun escapades that happened in their homes overnight. Glitter in the toilet, messes in the kitchen–and kids so excited they could barely contain themselves. But somehow, all that excitement channeled into a pretty calm classroom–that was unexpected (and felt like a St. Patrick’s Day gift).

We did some folding and cutting to create some lucky 4-leaf clovers–after we talked about their magical qualities (many of the first graders said they had experienced finding these rare and magical items). Most students were successful right away, and those who weren’t got theirs to come out whole on their second attempt. Then we turned them into some fun math. They wrote the number 17 in the middle (after all, it is March 17th) and then wrote math problems that equaled 17. Another unexpectedly fun and successful activity.

I like when the unexpected makes my day easier and more interesting. I also like paying attention to what is unexpected and why I identify it that way. Is it too much to wish for the rest of the week to be as pleasingly unexpected?

Be a Tree

5 Replies

Earlier this week I read the book, Be a Tree by Maria Gianferrari to my first grade students. I’m so fortunate to have an amazing librarian at my school who seems to know just what books I’d love to read before I’ve ever heard of them! Anyway, Be a Tree is a gorgeous book that is a blending of factual information about trees and metaphorical thinking and comparisons of humans and their communities to trees and their ecosystems. And the illustrations by Felicita Sala are worth just sitting and poring over.

I mentioned last week that I had taught my students some photography techniques, one of which was the bug’s eye view. So after reading and examining the photos in Be a Tree, we took out our sketch books and practiced drawing a forest (okay, 2 or three trees) from a bug’s eye view…with a real focus on the trunk, looking up like a bug would from the ground. Then we also took some times to think and write a list of all the ways we need and use trees.

The next day we sketched our forest again, this time on larger watercolor paper and then used oil pastels to blend colors to create texture and depth on the trunks and branches. Today we pulled out our watercolor trays to paint in the backgrounds. Honestly, the results have exceeded my expectations.

First graders also tried their hand at writing some tree metaphors. Here’s a few:

The roots can be the tentacles of an octopus.

Trees shake their branches like hands waving.

Pine trees are as sharp as mountain tops.

Tree bark is as brown as chocolate ice cream.

I love watching students grasp a new technique and/or way of thinking. Their ability to identify a metaphor is currently much stronger than their ability to generate one of their own. But that’s all part of the learning process. and the beauty of giving space to try on new ideas.

And there’s nothing better than wrapping all this learning in an appreciation of nature and all that it offers. There’s so much to learn from trees…and kids.

Photography and Writing

4 Replies

For nearly 14 years I have been taking a photo (nearly) every day and posting it to social media, specifically to Instagram (you can find me @kd0602. In many ways it is a part of my writing practice. The camera helps me pay attention and when I pay attention words begin to flow. (I also started my blog at about the same time)

I’ve also gotten in the habit of sharing my photography practice with my students, specifically teaching them some techniques to try on in their photography. Last week I showed first graders examples of photos taken from a bug’s eye view, a bird’s a view, and using the rule of thirds. They were excited to try this out! We headed out to our school garden where students were to take three photos using each technique. (And to try not to all take the same photos!). We returned to the classroom to take a close look at the 9 photos and select the one that would then become the basis of the writing we would do.

I was pleased with these first grade photos. I can see the bug’s eye view, the rule of thirds, and the bird’s eye view (and my students were eager to explain their perspective to me!).

Kindness: A Recipe

Leave a reply

When I woke up this morning I discovered that today is World Kindness Day. I don’t teach on Thursdays, so I didn’t have any plans to engage students today–and to be honest, I didn’t even know it was World Kindness Day until I saw it pop up on social media.

The irony is that we have been celebrating kindness in our classroom–both last week and this week. Last week, after reading Brett Vogelsinger’s blog post on Moving Writers titled Poetry Pauses for Peace Day 2 I couldn’t wait to share the mentor poem, Peace: A Recipe, with my young students. My students have a sense of recipe–they make cookies and muffins with their parents–but making a recipe for something abstract like peace was new for them.

Even before reading Anna Grossnickle Hines’ poem, I had asked my students what ingredients they might include if they were making a recipe for kindness (Brett had suggested having students write a recipe for hope, but kindness felt like a concept my first grade students would have more ideas for). There was no hesitation as hands began to raise. Honesty was the first ingredient mentioned. How much would you include, I asked? A pound was the answer. Then students contributed other ideas: caring, sharing, and including others. Every time I asked for an amount, the response came back in pounds! Even when I suggested maybe a teaspoon or a pinch–the answer was no, 5 pounds or 3 pounds or some other number of pounds. Clearly students thought we needed a extra large batch of kindness!

Studying Hines’ poem, we noticed words that were about cooking, expanding their understanding of recipe components. We underlined those words and drew illustrations for the poem before heading out for lunch. Time got away before we had time to write–but I kept my plan for writing in the back of my head to come back to when I had time.

Monday was a strange day this week. We had school followed by a holiday on Tuesday (Veterans Day)–my students had two special classes on Monday, so my time with them was limited. But…I did have time to come back to the idea of writing a recipe for kindness. Before we began we brainstormed a variety of cooking words and then students got to the writing. They started with ingredients (that expanded past the ideas we had last week)…and they wanted to be done. But, I reminded them, you have to say what to do with the ingredients. And they did.

There was so much success, even from my more reluctant writers. In celebration of World Kindness Day, here’s one example:

Kindness: A Recipe

To make kindness 

you put a pinch of honesty

And a spoonful of helping 

And a handful of respect

And you mix it

And you spread it around the world

And that’s it.

Thanks Brett for the nudge and Anna for the inspiration. And to all the first graders in my class, I’m excited that you are the ones cooking up kindness to spread around the world!