On day 7 of National Poetry Month, I have faced the most difficult challenge ever! As you know from Day 3, I don’t identify as a music person and today’s challenge was to use a song structure to write new lyrics. Chris over at Ethical ELA was generous, offering his song as structure and giving writers an out–if it doesn’t work for you, do something else. But…the point is to try…right?!?
So after a day spent in 100 degree temperatures learning about and photographing power generating windmills, I just had to figure out how to say something with a song structure. Since music is definitely a challenge for me, I asked my husband what song he might think of related to our exploration today. And he offered up the old classic, They Call the Wind Mariah from the movie Paint Your Wagon.
I listened and hummed…and tried my own (amateur-ish) attempt at song writing. This will definitely not be up for any Grammys, but I hope you get a bit of a glimpse of what a windmill farm is all about.
Today’s poem was inspired by the desert beauty of Joshua Tree National Park and the poetry prompt from Mo over at Ethical ELA as part of April’s #verselove. Today’s poetry comes in the form of a cherita–as Mo describes it: a 6 line story in 3 stanzas. First stanza is a single line, second stanza has 2 lines, and the third stanza has three lines. WordPress sometimes fights with me over formatting–so hopefully this will bear out as intended!
San Gorgonio Mountain view from Joshua Tree National Park
Joshua Tree
In this land life is hearty: thin and sharp
When water–life’s blood–arrives
natives drink their fill, not sure when the next sip will arrive
Living in this harsh world, extremes equal balance
hot and cold hold hands / wet and dry play tag
beauty is in the eye of the beholder and everywhere if you know where to look
@kd0602
Cholla cactus, up close and dangerous!Joshua Tree blooming
Today’s prompt for #verselove on Ethical ELA is to craft a 4×4 poem: 4 lines, 4 syllables per line, 4 stanzas, and a repeating refrain that moves from line 1 to 4 through the poem. As I hiked San Jacinto today, I found myself thinking about words and ideas that might fit this new-to-me poetic structure. Here’s my draft:
Once again I took my poetry inspiration from #verselove at Ethical ELA where I found seeds left by Jennifer. I found myself thinking about photography and exploration and identity and the ways that words are intertwined with all of those.
On this third day of National Poetry Month, #verselove via Ethical ELA focused on the idea of collaborative inspiration. I love the way that Gae and Lori inspired each other by “poeming” each other and then using the poem as a starting point for their own writing. I definitely felt poemed this morning as I read through the poems already scattered by the participants in this month-long poetry fest. It’s interesting to me that I’m not sure exactly what triggered my own piece…and idea, a word, a comment left by someone on one of the poems…
I’m Not a Music Person
I’m not a music person says the one
who keeps the radio set on talk
Until…
the first strains of Fur Elise transport her back to childhood
and the roommate–the stocky second (or third) hand upright
where her hands learned to make music
Until…
rifs from Take the A Train and other classic jazz
set her toes to tapping and fingers snapping
and she remembers listening to them move from noise to music
and that unexpected Christmas morning duet,
a gift from the heart
Until…she bursts into song (off key of course)
when The Sound of Music comes on TV
and her sons are dumbfounded that she knows
all the words
Until…
grandbabies come and she croons to them
the lullabies from her childhood and their fathers’ childhoods
Imagine my surprise this morning when the post by Ethical ELA was hosted by friend and colleague Emily Yamasaki! I was immediately drawn into both the mentor poem, things I have memorized by Maria Giesbrecht and Emily’s poem, Things I Know. I dove deeply into the cool pool of poems that emerged from Emily’s provocation, reading and feeling, admiring and analyzing as I began to think about my own writing for this second day of National Poetry Month.
Things I Know by Heart
The sleek curve of the egret’s neck
in the tidepool at low tide
The smells of love that fill our home
emanating from the kitchen
The silence of his last breath
matching the empty space in our family
My daily commute, etched in the recesses of my mind,
requiring no conscious thought
My childhood phone number
but not my passwords–they continue to elude me
The sweetness of little boys
now into the second generation
Fear of fire, seared into my memory
brought back by ashes that rain down like snowflakes
Fog’s gray blanket
an indicator that spring has arrived
Each of the traffic spots on the 5 between our house and theirs
no matter how long it takes, every trip is worth it
It’s April! And it’s the first day of National Poetry Month. I don’t profess to be a great poet–but I am able to share my love of words and poetry with my students–especially when I do the things I ask them to do.
So even though this is not a teaching day for me and even though Spring Break begins tomorrow and I won’t see my students until April 11th, I will write a poem each day. I know that I will be better able to coach and guide them if I am doing the poetry writing I want them to try.
I plan to use Eve Merriam’s Peeling an Orange with them when we get back to school after Spring Break, so why not experiment with it as a mentor text today? One of the techniques I notice in this poem is her use of the contrasting words carelessly and meticulously. So, since photos tend to inspire my writing, I took a peek through my camera roll and spotted this one of a snail from a neighborhood walk earlier this week. And here is the poem it inspired:
As March comes to an end, National Poetry Month is right around the corner. To get a bit of a head start–especially since we begin our Spring Break next week–I decided we needed to immerse ourselves in some poetry this week.
Poetry is nothing new in our class. We study a poem each week and then illustrate it, creating an anthology of poems we’ve worked with during the school year. We’ve written some poems of our own here and there. But the time is right for a deeper dive.
Daniel Finds a Poem by Micha Archer is a perfect book to get started. The first graders loved that the poem Daniel wrote was a compilation of the answers from all the animals that answered Daniel’s question, “What is poetry?” And it set the perfect stage for our own Poetry Is… brainstorm. After a start yesterday, we took this idea further today, stretching out ideas and embellishing them with vivid description. Here’s a few examples:
Poetry is a glass of warm hot chocolate on a cold, snowy winter day.
Poetry is a grasshopper jumping and hopping and bouncing all around the fields.
Poetry is a coconut with the flavor inside and the outside is so hard and thick like a layer of armor.
Poetry is a slippery fish, as beautiful as a butterfly.
Poetry is the sound of my dad snoring.
And somehow, in my mind, poetry and flowers are a perfect pairing. I had purchased some tulips and daffodils from Trader Joes over the weekend, knowing I wanted students to have a close up look at these symbols of spring (that are not commonly found growing around here). Yesterday students used a black oil pastel on watercolor paper to do a directed drawing of tulips in a vase. Today, we used liquid watercolor to create vibrant paintings of these beautiful spring flowers. The results are stunning!
Watercolor paintings drying on the classroom floor.
I plan to matte them along with the “Poetry Is…” writing. And I think I may have each student contribute one line to create a class Poetry Is poem for a poster to hang on our door! After all, National Poetry Month is right around the corner!
With the school year coming to a close, I wanted to come up with an activity for students that felt like play–like a party–and still provide academic content to satisfy my ever-present need to make use of all available instructional minutes. (Yes, even in the last week of school)
So, when I came across a blog post about making giant bubbles and bubble art, I knew I could turn this into a meaningful day of learning and fun…all wrapped up in a soapy bubble! I’m pretty fascinated by bubbles. I’ve spent quite a bit of time photographing giant bubbles at the beach and I’ve written about the “bubble man” a time or two (or more). I know that the trick to great bubbles is the solution–so prior to having my students explore and experiment, my husband and I tried our hand at bubbles over the weekend.
The basis of all bubbles is soap and water. But if you want the bubbles to be big and to have a bit of staying power, a bit of corn syrup and some glycerin need to be added to the mix. Using smoothie straws and yarn, I created a bubble wand that my students would be able to make on their own and started dipping and waving in my own attempt to create bubbles. This bubble thing is harder than it looks! I didn’t immediately get big beautiful bubbles flying from the wand. But with some patience, some tinkering, and some exploration of how to get a thin film filling with air onto my yarn…bubbles happened. At that point, with bubble solution pre-made, I was ready for a day of bubbles with third graders!
We started with a very interesting TED Talk titled, The Fascinating Science of Bubbles, from Soap to Champagne. We learned about surface tension, the geometry of bubbles and so much more. (If I were to do this in the future, I think I might devote an entire week rather than a whole day to bubbles!) Then we made our bubble wands and headed up to the field to make bubbles.
In spite of warning students that making these bubbles would take patience and experimentation, there was plenty of initial whining that “it’s not working!” I reminded them to keep trying. And then it happened…the first child experienced success! Like wildfire, bubbles emerged, filling the air with irridescent spheres.
The soap solution ran out before student interest waned, which is probably the best possible result! We headed back to the classroom with soapy hands, happy hearts and filled with visions and language about bubbles.
These young scientists are also prolific readers and writers, so after studying Valerie Worth’s short poem, Soap Bubbles, we created a list of bubble words and a list of potential bubble metaphors and then set the magic 7-minute writing timer and started writing. Like bubbles, colorful, delicate, evocative poems floated up, emerging from the points of students’ pencils.
Here’s a couple:
To complement the poetry and the elusive, temporary soap bubbles, we got out paper, pencils, water-based markers and some water and created bubbles…as art! Each artist created their own composition, tracing round shapes, adding a space where a light source reflected off each bubble. Then they added marker and finally, using just water and a paint brush, urged the marker to follow the water, creating beautiful dimensional bubbles on watercolor paper.
There is so much more we could have done with bubbles–including exploring the mathematics of spheres. Overall, it was an amazing day. Students could not believe that an entire school day had passed before they even realized it. Engagement was high, work quality was inspiring…it was an amazing last Monday of the school year! Based on this success, I know I will be working some bubble science into future teaching and learning!
Thinking Through My Lens 