Poem #13--Definito

I never intended for my students to write a poem a day with me, but one student's idea took hold: we're writing a poem a day about each other.

Each day, we draw a name and everyone writes a poem about that person. That person writes a poem about me.

At the end of the year, we'll have a book of poems about all the members of the class. A collection of memories. Handmade heartfelt gifts to each other.

I've taught a few short forms so far: 15 Words or Less, Haiku, Limerick, Acrostic, Chain, and Free Verse. 6 forms; 6 tools in their poetry-writing toolbox. Today, after a discussion of line breaks in Free Verse, one student asked if he had to write in the form I taught. "Of course not!" I replied. "Pick the form that works for what you want to say!" And that student went off and wrote a fabulous acrostic that captured the essence of his friend.

Here's a new form for me, and one I might teach my students -- the Definito. Heidi Mordhorst invented this form back in November. It has 10 lines in 3 stanzas -- 4 lines, 4 lines, and 2 lines, ending in the word being defined.

I had blood drawn today, which is a tricky proposition since only one arm can be used, and the key vein in that arm endured chemotherapy 12 years (YAY!) ago. Only the best phlebotomists are successful drawing blood from me. Today's phlebotomist was a real pro, and this poem is his definition of what makes a true phlebotomist.

It's about the needle

and it's about the tourniquet.

It's about the alcohol

and it's about the tap-tap-tap on the vein.

It's the difference between

drawing blood as a PART of your job

and drawing blood

AS your job.

Stick-meister:

Phlebotomist.

Mirror Mirror by Marilyn Singer

I am totally fascinated by Marilyn Singer's new book MIRROR MIRROR. I love any book that takes a new twist on fairy tales. That is the first thing that drew me to this book. I was excited to find a book that looked at two sides of some of our favorite stories--and through poetry at that.

But, when I actually sat down with the book, I was blown away. Really, who can do this kind of writing? Marilyn Singer is brilliant. Not only does Marilyn Singer think about two sides of a fairy tale. Not only does she do this with poetry. But, she ALSO does them in reversible verse. Each poem is written to be read top to bottom. Then it is rewritten from bottom to top, which gives it a whole new meaning. The book flap says, "Once upon a time, Marilyn Singer wrote a poem that could be read both up and down so that it would have different meanings in each direction. Then she challenged herself to a game--could she write more poems like it?" She must have been pretty darn impressed with herself when she finished this book.

Really, this book is quite fun. I can't imagine the process that Marilyn Singer went through to create these poems. A fun challenge for a poet. (I was going to challenge Mary Lee to write a reversible poem as part of her April challenge as a joke but she actually already did:-)

I think this is a great book for every classroom and library. Kids who love fairy tales will love it. It is great as part of a poetry collection. And what an amazing mentor text--wondering how someone thinks of these things. The joy in playing with words. So many possibilities!

Poem #12--On the Way Home From School

On the way home from school

I drove past

a very recent car accident.

Pieces of bumper

were scattered

in the intersection.

A bicycle lay on its side

but the cyclist seemed

in better condition than

the driver of the

mangled car.

Emergency vehicles were not there yet

but lots of people were

milling about.

I drove slowly past

thinking about how quickly

a life can change.

Thinking about driving home

to my college dorm

after a day of student teaching.

Driving the

bright green

Chevy Monza

my dad named Kermit.

Working on memorizing a poem

as I drove.

Deliberately

pausing

at the 4-way stop at the top of the hill.

Stopping before the last line of the poem.

Saying out loud,

"I have wasted my life" *

and looking up to see

the other car

running through the stop

smashing my driver's side door

changing my life

in

an

instant.

I no longer memorize poetry

while I drive.

by Mary Lee Hahn, copyright 2010

* Dang. I can't find (or remember) the poem I was trying to memorize. Seems like it had the word Minnesota in it, and the speaker was lounging in a hammock. Sound familiar? I'll keep looking...

I FOUND IT!!!

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year's horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.

James Wright

COUNTDOWN (The Sixties Trilogy)

Because I am a HUGE Deborah Wiles fan, I had to have an ARC of her new book, COUNTDOWN. I have been reading so much about it and once it ended up on Betsy's very early Newbery prediction list at Fuse #8, I knew I had to have it. So, Sally at Cover to Cover let the Central Ohio begging blogger group borrow her copy. Even though I don't want to let it go because I LOVE it, I will be passing it along to Bill at Literate Lives tomorrow. I hate the fact that I'll have a few weeks without the book.

This book takes place in the early 1960s, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. And although the setting and history are critical to the story, the real story is about Franny and her family. (It isn't often that I read a book with a main character named Frances, either!). As we have come to expect from Wiles, the characters are the best. Such amazing characters. Such amazing relationships and such real issues.

The brilliance in this book is the way that Wiles embedded primary source documents throughout the story of Franny. She embedded real words, photos, and more at the perfect point in the story. When I first looked through the book, I thought they might be distracting but they are placed perfectly and the pieces she's chosen help you understand exactly what the characters are going through and what those days felt like to people living through it. It is really brilliant. I didn't know much about the Cuban Missile Crisis but my thinking is that if our kids could learn history in this way, it would make so much more sense.

This book is up there as one of my favorite books of all time. If I were in a 5th or 6th grade classroom, it would definitely be on my read aloud list.

There is so much to love about the books. For me, as always, it was primarily a great story about great characters that I came to love. But the brilliance in craft was key. The documentary style pieces helped to create an understanding that readers could not have done otherwise.

The even better news than the fact that this is an amazing book is that I read that it is the first in a trilogy about the 60s. I just can't wait.

Really, this is a must, must, must read. I can so understand why Betsy included it on her Newbery list so early in the year. I am not alone in my love for this book. It has already received 3 starred reviews (Kirkus, Booklist, and the Hornbook)!!! And Monica at Educating Alice gave it a great review on her blog too. Really, go preorder one right now.

Poem #11 -- Sunday Night Inertia

Bees have no problem

Leaving work for tomorrow.

Tonight I'm a bee.

by Mary Lee Hahn, copyright 2010

Poetry and the SMART Board--Part 2

We had a great time with Poetry and the SMART Board with 1st Graders today. One of my favorite books for young children (and everyone else) is TANKA TANKA SKUNK! by Steve Webb. This book is great fun--it invites word play and chanting. The kids love to chant and clap along to the rhythm of the words. Since I only have a short time with the kids, the things we do are quick. We read TANKA TANKA SKUNK! which they already love. Then we used the SMART Board and sorted the students names into 1, 2 and 3 syllable columns. Each name immediately became an object that we could move around the board.

Because there are so many repeated words in TANKA TANKA SKUNK!, I taught the kids to duplicate and we wrote our own versions of a piece of the chant. A new chant that followed the rhythm of their favorite page. We used students' names--plugging them in where they would work to meet the rhythm. The kids had a ball and it was interesting to see kids enter at different places. For some kids, syllabication is just starting to make sense. For others, they loved the challenge of figuring out all of the possibilities for filling in a spot in the chant.

Again, I left the board filled with names available during choice time in the library. Kids had a great time using the names to create their own rhythms using TANKA TANKA SKUNK! as a model.

Now it is time to find other ways to increase the power of these shared reading experiences with the SMART Board. As these words and illustrations become movable objects, kids can do such amazing works using the SMARTBoard as a tool. Again, the power really came when the kids were using the board without me. After I model a few options for them to begin, I can see them using it in lots of ways during choice time in the library.

Poem #10 -- Life Lesson

Be careful when

indulging in

extravagant

self

pity.

The Universe

is more than glad

to give a new

per-

spective.

A hole in your

hot water tank...

now there's a REAL

life

worry.

photo and poem by Mary Lee Hahn, copyright 2010

I played with rhythm today.

Seemed appropriate since the hot water tank played with the rhythm of my LIFE.

Poetry and the SMART Board

We are getting ready to have the SMART Board in the library moved to a different location so we haven't used it much. But this week, the 2nd and 3rd graders used it for Poetry Writing and revision. What a powerful tool for Writing Workshop. I can see the possibilities of a SMART Board in a workshop classroom.

Today, I taught a lesson similar to lessons I've taught before. I think I originally got the idea from Georgia Heard, author of FOR THE GOOD OF EARTH AND SUN. She suggests a collaborative poem and I have always found the lesson to be a powerful one--one that really moved kids in their poetry writing strategies. This is a whole group lesson in which everyone contributes a line or phrase about something that is common--the morning, a tree, an experience--something that everyone can write about. You can get the phrases in several ways. Everyone can write a bit about the topic and then choose a line they love. Or they can just brainstorm lines. There are several ways. Following the sharing of lines, everyone can use the common language to create a poem. It is always amazing how different each poem is when they all come from the same list of words.

Well, the SMART Board made this lesson far more powerful than it's ever been. Taught so much about poetry but also gave such great messages about revision and playing with language. One group wrote about our school's courtyard. We looked at it for a while and came up with phrases of things we noticed. Anyone who had a line to contribute to the SMART Board did so. I typed them as kids shared. One class came up with this list:

benches waiting for people
the trees are moving all around
a nest in a tree is in a battle for life or death
bushes barely moving
there is a birdhouse
colorful
shrubs weeping
tulips peeking
I saw a splash of pink and yellow
red, yellow, pink
the tree is waving hi

We then played with the lines, combining them in different ways to create different poems. Since each line automatically became a text box, I typed the lines on the left side of the board. They could be easily dragged over to the right side in any order, thus creating a poem. The end poem that this class came up with, using these words as an anchor was:

Plants

the trees are moving all around
bushes barely moving
splashes of green
shrubs weeping
and
tulips peeking

This whole lesson took less than 15 minutes.

My favorite part was the work that happened after the lesson. I left the page up with the lines available for students who wanted to play with the words a bit more. About 4-5 kids per class (many from our SMART Board Team) chose to continue the work with poetry on the SMART Board. They discovered more about spacing, white space, adding and deleting words, etc. One group decided to begin a whole new poem--using the colored markers to add new phrases. The SMART Board allowed for great revision play and word play--which is exactly how we want writing to feel. This lesson is an old one and the use of the SMART Board was nothing that exciting. But the tool did invite some amazing collaboration and because I have taught similar lessons many, many times over the year, I was amazed at how the use of the SMART Board really lifted the level of collaboration as well as the willingness to play with the language to create something new. And, in the process, they also learned so much about the workings of the Board itself--the problem solving was fun to watch as they discovered new things and gave things a try.

Poem #9 -- More About Those Xs

photo by sczoron

Second grader came up to me

on the playground yesterday,

"Teacher, Teacher! There are so many Xs in the sky!"

I looked up,

and there were two immense contrails

making a huge X in the sky.

And then I turned and saw another...and another...and another...

five Xs in the blue spring sky.

I asked him how he thought they got there

and he said something about airplanes,

but I said I thought a leprechaun put them there

(X marks the spot for treasure)

and he ran off yelling about Xs

and treasure

and I was the rich one.

by Mary Lee Hahn, copyright 2010

I wrote about this yesterday in haiku form. Today's poem is actually the text of an email to a friend telling the whole story. Because she loved it so much (especially the last line), I decided to make it into its own poem.

The Poetry Friday Roundup today is at Paper Tigers.

Here's a reprint of a bunch of the Kidlitosphere (and other assorted) NaPoMo projects that I'm following:

Gregory K. is once again hosting 30 Poets/30 Days with previously unpublished poems by favorite children's authors.

Tricia Stohr-Hunt is interviewing 30 children's poets, beginning with Mary Ann Hoberman, the US Children's Poet Laureate. The Poetry Makers list is stellar!

Jone MacCulloch shares Thirty Days, Thirty Students, Thirty Poems: original poems by students.

Jama Rattigan is posting original poems & favorite recipes by some of the Poetry Friday regulars.

At A Wrung Sponge, Andromeda is writing a "haiga" (photo and haiku) each day. Her photography is simply stunning. The haikus are amazing, too!

Kelly Fineman at Writing and Ruminating will continue the Building a Poetry Collection series she began last year -- selecting a poem a day in a kind of personal Poetry Tag (see Sylvia Vardell's version below) and providing analysis. I call this The University of Kelly Fineman because I learn so much in each post!

Sylvia Vardell is inviting poets to play Poetry Tag. She will invite poets to "play" along by offering a poem for readers to enjoy, then she will "tag" a poet who shares her/his own poem THAT IS CONNECTED to the previous poem in SOME way—by a theme, word, idea, tone-- and offers a sentence or two explaining that connection. What a creative idea!

Laura at Author Amok is highlighting the poets laureate of all 50 states this month...well, all the ones that have a poet laureate... Fun Fun!

Laura Salas is posting a children's poem per day from a poetry book she loves.

Lee Wind is publishing many new Teen voices during April for National Poetry Month. GLBTQ Teen Poetry.

Bud the Teacher gives a picture prompt every day during April and invites readers to post the poem it inspires in the comments of his blog.

ORIGINAL POEM-A-DAY CHALLENGE

Checks these blogs daily for new original poems by the following people:

Susan Taylor Brown

Jone MacCulloch

Elizabeth Moore

April Halprin Wayland

Liz Scanlon

Amy Ludwig VanDerwater

If I missed your project, please let me know and I'll add it to my list!

Poem #8 -- When Recess Duty Becomes a Blessing in Disguise: A Haiku

photo by FrancoisRoche

Teacher, Teacher! Look!

There's lots of Xs in the sky!

How did they get there?!?

by Mary Lee Hahn, copyright 2010