Poetry Friday -- Space is a Word

Back on September 3, Laura Purdie Salas shared a poem written using a wordplay form that was the challenge Nikki Grimes offered up at Today's Little Ditty back in 2015. She featured this form in her October newsletter, "Salas Snippets."

I forwarded Laura's newsletter to my school email and luckily it surfaced right when I needed it.

We had finished our big Life Science unit, and covered our Space Science standards. Rather than giving a traditional test, I wanted my students to interact with the information in a creative way. "___ is a Word" poems were perfect! 

After studying Laura's examples, we noticed that this kind of poem always has a description of the chosen word in the first line, and it tells more about the word or the shape of the word in the poem.

Here's the poem we wrote together:

And here are a few of the poems my 5th graders wrote (click on the images to enlarge them):

Moon is a Word by J.

Pluto is a Word by A.

Planet is a Word by Z.

Orbit is a Word by S.

Pluto is a Word by A.

Linda B. has this week's Poetry Friday Roundup at TeacherDance.

Poetry Friday -- Playing With Poetry

I picked up a few poetry toys at nErDCampMI last week.

With Instant Poetry, poetry forms meet multiple choice. You might want to try a nursery rhyme, a poem in the style of William Carlos Williams or Emily Dickinson, an ode, free verse, or more.

 

click image to enlarge

I've been wanting to try writing a sonnet, so I chose the Shakespearean Sonnet (bottom left in the collage above).

Before the Fates (b) cut in this checkout line
Let all who (a) brought some queso dip please stay
And find our (c) kids out back making green slime.
Neither king nor fool (a) returns their lunch tray.
Though time (b) cares not when chickens come to roost,
We hear the (a) band at least will take the stage.

Ok. I'm going to stop there. There are others that have options that string together with more sense. Let's try the Nursery Rhyme (top right).

Mary, Mary, quite contrary
(a) loved sarcastic commentary.

scribble-out poetry (aka blackout poetry) has a lot more poet-ential. This spiral-bound book has 45 bits of text ready for you to modify by scribbling-out the words you don't want with your permanent marker and leaving behind your poem. The text comes in different shapes (see top of collage) and amounts (see bottom of collage). Sources for the text bits include Frankenstein, The Count of Monte Cristo, War and Peace, and Pride and Prejudice, just to name a few. Each page is perforated and includes "to" and "from" lines and the attribution for the original text on the back so that you can gift your poetic creations!

click image to enlarge

I scribbled-out a bit from Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (top right in the collage). This poem goes out to all the teachers who are enjoying their last weeks of living-and-learning-at-a-relaxing-pace.

Great 

fortune 

if you teach.

You contribute to the happiness of

life,

consume the

daily

pleasure of being

a good

instrument.

Scribbled-out by Mary Lee Hahn, 2019

Carol, at Carol's Corner, is just one of those teachers for whom this poem was written! She's got the Poetry Friday roundup this week.

Word Game Wednesday

Do not go where the path may lead. Go instead where there is not path and leave a trail.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Word Game Wednesday

What would you like to do?

Play Word Around? Rhyme Out? Bananagrams? Do not

dawdle; find a group and go

tinker with words! Play Scrabble; observe where

the

words intersect, criss-crossing a path

of letters that may

lead

to unexpected mergers. Perhaps go

online instead

and play Free Rice, where

you earn kernels of rice for nuggets of knowledge. There

is

no

guarantee, but Word Game Wednesday could have been the path

that led us to be homophone, homonym, and

homograph hunters. Words open the world. Using them, we leave

a

splendiferous trail.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2018

Newish Books That Have Fun With Words

During the first week of the school year, I read the book Animal Soup asking my kids if they liked words. They seemed confused. "What do you mean? Do we like words?"  I explained that I loved playing with words and the fun that writers had with words. I liked when writers did clever things with words. A few nodded while others tilted their heads not quite sure what I was getting at.

Some of the work we'll do in word study this year revolves around figurative language and using various parts of speech. The way I learned about figurative language and parts of speech was not joyful.  We learned about it in an isolated way and learned to recognize and name it but we didn't see the fun or joy in the clever ways people used words. Don't get me wrong,  I LOVED diagramming sentences (it was actually one of my biggest talents in middle and high school) BUT I never actually transferred any of that to using the language or to finding joy in the words and phrases that made up the sentences.

So I've been thinking hard about how to best move my students from not really thinking about words to finding joy in them to paying attention to the use of words in writing. So many days I find myself looking at my shelves of books, pulling collections of books based on some conversations we've had in class. These last few days I've pulled the following newish books to add to our conversations around words.

Words by Christopher Niemann

This small chunky book is mostly visual and is a great celebration of words of all kinds. This is one kids spend a lot of time with and one that they go back to again and again.

Nothing Rhymes with Orange by Adam Rex

Not only is this a fun book that explores fun fruit words but the character of Orange (who has no place in a rhyming story) is hilarious!

A Greyhound a Groundhog by Emily Jenkins

This book plays with just a few words to tell a story and is fun to read aloud.

Guess Who, Haiku by Deanna Caswell and Bob Shea

These are fun riddles written in Haiku. This one is fun to read and guess the answers to these riddles. After reading a few kids will want to try writing some of their own.

Yaks Yak: Animal Word Pairs by Linda Su Park

What a fun way to look at words that can be used as different parts of speech--lots of noun-verb combinations to create fun scenes.  

Blue Sky White Stars by Sarvinder Naberhaus and Kadir Nelson

The brilliance in the way the author uses words invites conversation. This book is powerful and gorgeous and gives readers so much to think about, even though there are so few words.

It's Not Jack and the Beanstalk by Josh Funk

Although this one does not focus on word play, kids definitely notice the fun in the author's use of words in several places.

This House Once by Deborah Freedman

The partnered language in this book may invite readers to try describing things in new ways. The author says a great deal in short, beautiful phrases.

Laughing Out Loud

If Apples Had Teeth
by Shirley Glaser
illustrated by Milton Glaser
Enchanted Lion Books, August, 2017
review copy provided by the publisher

You will want this book. It might change the way you look at the world.

Some of the IFs are practical:

"If apples had teeth, they would bite back."
"If a kangaroo was fond of you, he could carry your books home from school."

Some of the IFs rhyme or have alliteration:

"If a rhinoceros wore a sweater, he would look a lot better."
"If horses had hat racks, they would be reindeer."

But some of the IFs make you drop your chin:

"If eggs were made of glass, you could count your chickens before they hatched."
"If trees were pink, they would be nevergreens."

Did I mention the art? Very whimsical and fun!

Did I mention that this is a reprint from 1960, a year that may or may not have significance in my life? Here's a bit from Enchanted Lion about why they've brought this book back:

"Enchanted Lion's catalog currently pursues three different acquisition routes: origination, translation, and reissues. It feels important, especially in this moment, to bring back books that might otherwise be lost to time. We've published some treasures, including three André François books, this Glaser book, and our upcoming Jacqueline Ayer books. We're currently looking at another Glaser book and have begun working with out of print Remy Charlip books, which we're thrilled about. 

IF is a book that needed to be brought back. It's playful, smart, beautiful...we're so glad it hasn't been lost.

In terms of the art, the illustrations are hand drawn ink illustrations. A part of why they're so vivid and visually stunning is due to Pantone spot coloring process."

Excuse me while I open my notebook and see if I can write some IFs of my own!