Showing posts with label Amy LV. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Amy LV. Show all posts

Friday, August 30, 2019

Poetry Friday -- Play


©Amy LV, 2011

Today many (all?) of the classrooms at my school are participating in a Global School Play Day. It's very simple, but most every simple thing turns out to be incredibly powerful. Here are the rules:
  • No Screens: Students are encouraged to bring toys, but electronic toys or any devices with screens should be avoided.
  • No Structure: Adults should not attempt to organize or structure student play in any way.
  • Stay Out of the Way: Adults should let students manage their own play and should not interfere except in situations where someone could get hurt or fired.
Because we're doing this so early in the year, I will be explicit about this being a time when the class, who named themselves Ohahna (the Hawaiian word for family is ohana), can become even more of a family by making sure every member of our family is included and welcomed. We will learn so much about each other, about ourselves, and about our community. I can't wait!

Kathryn Apel has the Poetry Friday roundup this week. Looking ahead, please note that Cheriee and Carol V. have switched roundup weeks (September 27 and October 4).  Our sidebar is updated, as is the schedule at KidLitosphere Central.


Friday, October 27, 2017

Poetry Friday -- Mentor Texts


You've heard about it, you've marked it "To Read" in GoodReads, maybe you've even ordered it and have it on your stack. Move it to the top of your stack, make some time, and dig in! Once I started reading, I was hooked. I wanted to keep reading, but more than that, I was anxious to start writing and try some of her ideas with my classroom of writers.

With a short week this week, I decided to ease my writers into informational writing with some of the strategies from Poems are Teachers, and definitely by using the mentor text poems (one from a professional poet and two from students accompany each section). My goal was for them to develop fluency in generating ideas and drafts, and to show them that a minimal amount of "research" is needed in order to jot a draft. I was also hoping that all of our work thus far in the year with "Unpacking Poems" (hat tip to Tara for the idea) would evidence itself in the students' poems...and it DID! Alliteration, similes, thoughtful stanzas, repetition, and more! Finally, a future goal is that my students will transfer both the fluency of ideas and drafting, as well as the use of rich and creative language to their informational writing. Once you dig in and start reading Amy's book, you'll see how your students' work writing poetry will do what the subtitle says and "Strengthen Writing in All Genres."

On the first day, I spread my "Activists and Trail Blazers" shelf of picture book biographies on the meeting area carpet. We browsed the books, jotting notes about what we read, about what we noticed in the illustrations, or about connections we were making. Midway through our time, we looked at the mentor poems in the section "Listen to History" (p. 18 and 21) and I sent students off to try a draft. Here are a couple of the more polished first draft poems and the book that inspired each poem:





"In America, You Can Achieve Anything"

Discrimination is "whites only."
Discrimination is no prom.
Discrimination is closed doors.
Discrimination is skin deep.

Honor is head held high.
Honor is good grades.
Honor is medical school.
Honor is Olympic gold.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2017





Try Hard

Two trainers one passion
Try hard
Train hard

Stolen bike
Fight for rights
Try hard

Try to fight
Rare in light
Try hard

©M., 2017






MLK's Dream Day

Not everyone is treated the same.
Not everyone had the same things we have now.
Who is to blame?

One man stepped forward.
On August 18, 1963,
he said his famous speech
"I have a dream."

©J., 2017



On the second day, we tried the same thing, but I put out a shelf full of animal books from my nature nonfiction section. The mentor poems in Amy's book were from the "Find Ideas in Science" section (p. 32 and 35). Here are a few more first drafts and the books that inspired them. You can probably tell that writing a mask poem was one of the suggestions!




Creepy Crawlers

I have 8 eyes
I can be small
I can be big

I can crawl
Jump and bite

I love bugs
I have more than
One leg or two or three

What can I be?
What am I?

(jumping spider)

©A., 2017





Hello, my little prey!
I see you came to the luminous light.

But you shouldn't have.

As the people say,
"Don't go to the light."

I can be 1 or 2 or 3, *
but can you guess me?

Who am I?

(Anglerfish)

©M., 2017

*"Smaller males join their bodies to mine, latching on with their teeth until their skin fuses into mine. I eat for all of us, sharing the nutrients from my bloodstream."





Mr. Tree

I, Mr. Tree, have been here
longer than you, I've been here longer
than your mother and father.

I, Mr. Tree, give you oxygen
and in return you give me water and food.
I will help you until I go TIMBER!!

I, Mr. Tree, live in your back yard
with Miss Flower and Sir Grass.

I, Mr. Tree, am still here as a seedling
after I pass on.

©H., 2017


(H's poem shows that your writing might wind up taking you in a very different direction than you expected!)



Brenda has the Poetry Friday Roundup this week at Friendly Fairy Tales.


Thursday, July 06, 2017

Poetry Friday -- Love Song to Reading



Hooray for a book of poems that celebrates reading...

The WONDER of reading words
"...that fly like birds
from pages
in your book
to branches
in your brain
where they sing
like soothing
summer rain."
The JOY of learning to read.
"I longed so to read.
This was my hope.
This was my need." 
All the KINDS of reading we do:
Cereal Box
Sports Page
Maps
Road Signs
Field Guides
Google Searches
Birthday Cards
Magazines
Sunday Comics
The ways reading COMPLETES us:
"Every single thing you read
becomes a part of you." 
"A book gives you a double life." 
The ways reading CHANGES us:
"An open book will make you kind." 
"Charlotte taught me what to do." 
"I'm a reader.
I explore." 

Thank you, Amy, for a book that readers of all ages and stages will want to hug and share and read over and over again until it falls apart.

Read! Read! Read!
by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater
illustrated by Ryan O'Rourke
Wordsong, September 2017



Carol has the Poetry Friday Roundup this week at Beyond LiteracyLink.

For next week's Poetry Friday Roundup, Tabatha has invited us to write/share poems in honor of National Mac and Cheese Day, which falls on Friday, July 14 this year. Start cooking up an oozy, gooey Poetry Friday post!! (It's optional, but it was so much fun when we celebrated Billy Collins at the beginning of his birth month back in March.)

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Happy Book Birthday, Amy LV!


Forest Has a Song: Poems
by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater
illustrated by Robbin Gourley
Clarion Books, 2013
review copy provided by the publisher

Today is the day! Happy Book Birthday to FOREST HAS A SONG!!

For an interview with Amy, see the Nerdy Book Club: Interview by Irene Latham.

For a peek inside the book and for some amazing tasty treats, check out Jama Rattigan's book birthday post at Jama's Alphabet Soup. (Trilobite cookies? Really?! "Fossil" is one of my favorite poems in the book, so no treat could be more perfect!)

For a wealth of poems and resources for teachers, go to Amy's blog The Poem Farm. Don't miss the "Find a Poem" tab. Amy has indexed her poems by topic and by technique -- an invaluable resource for mentor texts. You can also find her Dictionary Hike there.

For insight into how writers use their notebooks, Amy has her Sharing Our Notebooks blog.

As Jama said, today is extra special to Amy because it is the publication date of her FIRST book of poetry. Today is extra special to the rest of us (readers and poetry fans and Amy LV fans) because it is the publication date of her FIRST OF MANY books of poetry.

A TOAST TO AMY! Here's to the first book, and to all the rest to come!





FTC Required Disclosure: This site is an Amazon affiliate, and purchases made through Amazon links may result in my receiving a small commission (at no additional cost to you).