Poetry Friday -- 15 Words or Less

The little orange fur-ball

stuck in a cage,

the little orange fur-ball

sleeping in a rage.

***

The cat is tiny

all bright and gold

while it lays in its 

cage.

***

The Game

The game 

where the

fluffy

cat stares

with 

vicious thoughts

and the dog

lies

relaxed...

***

I stare at you

you stare back.

When my 

owner comes

you get 

kicked out.

***

The cat looks at me.

I wag my 

tail.

I think he is

my friend.

***

Ruff Ruff

Meow Meow

Cat scratched --

"OW"

***

The cage is strong

and

tough it is

black like the 

black night sky

***

the cat is

small

while the dog is

huge

the cage is

big

the cage is 

open

***

Last Friday, when I told my students that I was going to hear both J. Patrick Lewis and Kay Ryan, the Poet Laureate of the U.S., speak, we had a great discussion about who the Poet Laureate is and what they do in that job. My students decided that they might like to grow up and become poets because, "poets get to break the rules and not use punctuation and capitalization if they don't want to (a discussion we had last week), and then you could become the "head poet" for all of the United States!!!"

We have Achievement tests this week and next. The schedule changes leave us with odd little scraps of time in the day that are perfect for introducing some short forms of poetry and starting our poetry writing unit. 

After I modeled writing a 15 Words or Less poem inspired by another photo and explained my choices of line breaks and repetition of phrases, I put this picture of our cat, Willie Morris, and our friends' dog, Ruby, up on the TV and turned the students loose to write without any explanation of the picture. The students whose poems I'm sharing today wrote them in about 5 minutes!! The variety in these poems is really fun -- the cat, the dog, even the cage!

The story behind the photo is that Willie Morris has taken over Ruby's den. (Ruby was spending the weekend with us.) In fact, when Ruby visits, she has to follow all of Willie's rules. Ruby really really wants to be friends with Will, but he thinks it's more fun to make a big dog do whatever he decides he wants the dog to do. Will has been known to back Ruby into the bedroom and onto her dog bed and refuse to even let her look at him until he was ready!  Isn't it amazing that some of the students captured that attitude in their poems without even knowing the story?!  

For the rest of the month, we'll explore more short forms of poetry -- haiku, limericks, couplets, and acrostics. I'll share some of the students' poems and the picture that was their prompt.

We still need just a couple of Poetry Friday hosts between now and August (see schedule in the sidebar). If you're interested, leave a note in the comments. The round up today is at Under the Covers.