Poetry Friday -- Whacked

Flickr Creative Commons Photo by Peasap

BIRTHDAY PARTY — CHECKLIST

by Mary Lee Hahn

Children — driven

Presents — given

Cake — gobbled

Apples — bobbled

Donkey tail — tacked

Piñata – whacked

Games — played

Mom’s nerves — frayed

I still can't believe I won my bracket in Round One of Madness! 2012 -- the Children's Poetry Writing Tournament over at Ed DeCaria's blog Think Kid, Think!

This poem surprised me. My prompt was "whacked." I have two pages of brainstorming and false starts in my notebook before the phrases "Donkey tail -- tacked" and "Piñata -- whacked" show up. Then my poem changed from a bad kid with a baseball bat to a birthday party. 

I didn't think about what a risk it would be to submit a poem with only 18 words. I guess the moral of that story is that word choice is just about everything in poetry. (Maybe in all writing?)

The poems in the second flight of round one are still open for voting. Go over and enjoy all the brand-new sparkly-fresh poems (and vote)! Then go to the Poetry Friday Roundup at Greg's blog, GottaBook.

A Wrinkle in Time on Kidblog

Yesterday I wrote about our annotation of A Wrinkle in Time. Today I thought I'd share some posts that one of my students has done on her blog. These posts were neither by invitation nor command -- they came entirely from the student's desire to respond to her reading. She is an ELL student who has been in this country and learning English for just over a year. I have only edited her writing in minor ways to help communicate her meaning.



It let me think….

Today after school I know it was going to rain or something. When I walk home, I think about the black thing that is over Earth. I think that is the black thing that the author she is talking about or have an idea to make on wrinkle in time! I think that when one time it rain and then the author of wrinkle in time think about it and make the story name: Wrinkle in Time! I want to ask her if that my idea is right or wrong, I will be really happy if I am right!

Dear Meg,

Thank you for being a nice character; some time I am just like you, I am not doing what I have to do, so I get into troubles. Every time I start a book, I always look for the books like A Wrinkle in Time! I think you guys are not only looking for your father, but you are learning that who you are and people don’t have to be the same, the best thing on Earth can be the worst thing on Earth, you know people are never be the same, but you will don’t have friends if you are not the same as others. I learn that you don’t have to be just like others, but it will be very good if others understand you, so you can be friend with them. I hope the 3 ladies live happily ever after being a star! Said hello to your family for me!!!

Dear Charles Wallace,

Thank you for being a good character, but the thing is that you can’t give in, and as your sister said that like and equal are two different things. After your sister uses the power of love to get you out, I think you learn that you can’t get in, your sister always loves you, and you have to love her back. I hope you are being a good brother to Sandy and Denny, and teach them what you learn!

PS: keep on doing the hard work!

Madness! 2012 -- Voting is LIVE!

Head on over to the Live Scoreboard on Ed DeCaria's blog Think Kid, Think! Almost all of the Round One, Flight One poems are up and ready for your votes. Yes, mine is there, but take a minute to enjoy ALL of the "Kids' Poetry. Under Pressure."

Annotating A Wrinkle in Time

You might remember me mentioning that I am reading aloud A Wrinkle in Time (well, actually Madeline L'Engle is, through the magic of audio books...) and that we participated in the 50 Years, 50 Days, 50 Blogs blog tour for the 50th anniversary of the publication of the book.

Inspired by Monica Edinger's blog posts about annotating Charlotte's Web with her fourth graders, and fueled with a "worst they can do is say no" attitude, I asked the promoter of the blog tour if it would be possible to get a class set of A Wrinkle in Time so that my class could try annotating the book as we listened to it.

She (and Macmillan) said yes. When the books came, I had my copy from my 6th grade Scholastic book order on hand. I had already told them that A Wrinkle in Time had been a landmark book for me as a reader. Now they looked at my scuffed copy as they held their shiny new copies. I told them that I had kept that book for almost 40 years, and that they, too, might keep the book in their hands for 40 or more years. Someday when they were all grown up, they might tell their children (or even their students) about the difference that book had made in their lives. Ten year-olds can't usually imagine 40 years into the future, but I think a few of them had a glimmer of it for just a second there.

What kinds of things have we been noticing as we annotate and discuss the book?

• Words. Rich, rich vocabulary. And often words that relate to our word study focus, coming to life right there in the book!
• Connections. A geranium blooming on the windowsill of mother's lab -- just like the one in our classroom!
• Places in the story where Madeline L'Engle changed the mood of the story, or made us ask questions, or where we wrote, "Uh oh..."
• Symbolism -- dark is evil, light is good; evil is cold, good is warm.
• Who else has fought against the "shadow" on our planet? Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Ruby Bridges, Abe Lincoln, all the people who stop wars...
• Madeline L'Engle's use of similes, metaphors and idioms.
• The importance of freedom and individualism, family and friendship, love and trust.

Yesterday we watched the Wonderopolis episode on time travel. It was fun to wonder if time travel will be possible in their lifetimes, or if they might someday be part of a team of scientists who bring us closer to that reality.

We're not quite finished with the book. We have about 20 pages left, and I think I'm going to ask them to finish the book and annotate the last few chapters on their own over spring break. Then, when we come back together week after next, we can have the kind of discussion that Monica's classes have.

We're not quite finished with the book...I'm thinking about that phrase...and I'm realizing that my students will NEVER be quite finished with this book. Some of them, anyway. This will be a book that keeps sounding and resounding in their lives as they grow up with it, grow into it, grow away from it, and hopefully come back to it. This is a book that has potential to leave a never-ending ripple in their thinking and in their reading lives. It doesn't seem like enough to simply say Thank You to Macmillan for providing these books for my class. What I'm really thanking them for is helping me to change the lives of 24 children.

Whacked

The first round words have been sent out and 64 Poets (and "poets") around the interwebs are busily crafting poems for Ed DeCaria's Madness! 2012 (Kids' Poetry. Under Pressure.)

Go to Ed's webpage. Explore the rules, the pairings, the Poets (and "poets") -- all found in the "Madness! 2012" dropdown you can find underneath the word THINK.

My first round word is WHACKED. My poem is written, kid-tested, and submitted. Sometime tomorrow morning, the voting will open. Go check out all the first round pairs. Vote for the best poem in each pair, then half of us will get a new prompt and start writing all over again...and again and again, for your amusement AND ours, until all of the tournament brackets are filled and the winning Poet (or "poet") is proclaimed.

Our Childhood Selves

My parents were visiting last weekend.  My dad was talking to my 12-year old and started reciting a crazy fish poem he says all of the time. But this time, it triggered a memory of another fish poem he used to recite to me when I was little. A favorite.  We kept reciting the first lines over and over until we couldn't remember anymore. I googled it and found a finger play version that reminded us of the parts we couldn't remember. LOVE this poem/song.  I have to say, hearing my dad recite it took me back to being three. Actually to the apartment we lived in.  I was so happy listening to his voice recite the fishy poem that I hadn't heard in years:

My darling little goldfish
Hasn't any toes
He swims around without a sound
And bumps his funny nose (the site says hungry nose but my family says funny:-)
He can't come out to play with me
Nor I get in to him.
Although I say, "Come out and play."
He says, "Come in and swim."

My 21 year daughter loved the book LUNCH by Denise Fleming.  She loved when I read it because of the way I did the mouse's sniffing noise.  (I must say, I am pretty good at it:-)  Anyway, even now, when that book or something related comes up, Alexa looks at me with that 4 year-old face and says, "Do the sniffing noise."  She reverts back to her 4 year-old self, just like I reverted back to my 3 year-old self with my dad last week.

When I talked to my 12 year old about this, she immediately said she remembered when she was little, Alexa used to sing The Eensy-Weensy Spider to her, but messed up on purpose.  She giggled like her 4 year-old self as she was telling me and suggested we Skype Alexa so she could do it for her again--it was not the same if I did it.

I love the ways these memories bring us back to our childhood selves.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Not a big reading week for me.  I had something every night after school. It was a good week, but VERY busy!  I did read a bit every night before bed so I got a little bit of reading in, but not much.

I am about halfway through with Haruki Murakami's book WHAT I TALK ABOUT WHEN I TALK ABOUT RUNNING. My friend, Samantha Bennett recommended it to me and I'm so glad I'm reading it. It is a great essay/memoir-type book focusing on running and writing. I love hearing about people talk about the things they are passionate about.  And I love his insights about running. It is a good read.

I also read a graphic novel from the Sports Illustrated Kids series-SPOTLIGHT STRIKER. I am so glad to have discovered these.  I was pleasantly surprised reading this and plan to order several more from the series for the library. They are short, sports-based graphic novels that will be perfect for lots of kids. I thought the characters and story lines were pretty well-developed too. A great new find!

I am also about halfway through THE HUMMING ROOM by Ellen Potter and am enjoying it. I am a huge Secret Garden fan so this is a fun read. I will write about this one after I finish it.

My favorite read of the week was MARTY MCGUIRE DIGS WORMS by Kate Messner. I love everything Kate Messner writes and have been waiting for this second book about Marty McGuire since I read the first arc last year. I knew I had to read this one fast because there will be many teachers and students fighting for it once I share it at school. It was a great read! I loved the character of Marty right away when I read the first book and I love her even more now.  Years ago, when I read the second Clementine book, I knew I was hooked for life.  I felt the same way when reading this second Marty McGuire book.  Marty tells the stories in this series and I LOVE her voice.   Here are some of my favorite lines from the book:

Plus, Monday is veggie goulash day in the cafeteria, which would be awful except that they serve ice cream cups for dessert because who would buy goulash if you weren't getting ice cream with it?


Mrs. Grimes goes up on stage with clickety-clackety shoes. If those were my shoes up there, I'd jump around and make some more noise on that nice wood floor, but I guess Mrs. Grimes has very good self-control and that's why she gets to be principal.


I  don't do paper dolls, especially not ones dressed in scratchy-looking dresses.


I am not patient. My mom says "patient" and I are not even distant relatives.


I write three observation journal entries without even peeking, which is pretty clever if you ask me.


Seriously, how could anyone not love Marty? Not only is she a great character but this book is all about how she does a project to help the environment. There are so many great connections that this would make a great read aloud for any grade level.  It is a great school story about a great character. I am already anxiously awaiting the next Marty McGuire book!

I have several books on my stack and I am hoping I have more time to read this week:

I received Michael Scotto's upcoming book, POSTCARDS FROM PISMO which looks great. I am huge fan of LATASHA so I am looking forward to this read. Others on my stack are THE FALSE PRINCE, CROW by Barbara Wright and BEFORE YOU GO, an upcoming YA novel by James Preller

I'm also looking forward to checking out FORGIVE ME, I MEANT TO DO IT: FALSE APOLOGY POEMS by Gail Carson Levine which is due out this week and TRAIN LIKE A MOTHER which is due out later this month.

Visit TEACH MENTOR TEXTS for the round up!

Poetry Friday: MADNESS!

The game is ON!

Ed DeCaria, at Think, Kid, Think, is hosting a March Madness Tournament of Children's Poetry.

There are 64 poets signed up to play...including ME!

There are brackets and seeds and all kinds of other things about tournaments that I don't really understand.

But there is also fun, creativity, spontaneity, voting, and...did I mention already? FUN!

I need some fun.

I woke up this morning thinking about the Poetry Friday post I hadn't yet written, and this is the poem that immediately came to mind. "I am overtired / Of the great harvest I myself desired." ...And I'm not talking about apple picking here, either.

AFTER APPLE PICKING

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

Myra has the Poetry Friday roundup this week at Gathering Books.

2012 Notable Children's Books in the Language Arts

The Notable Books in the Language Arts Committee, sponsored by the Children’s Literature Assembly of the National Council of Teachers of English, selects thirty titles each year that best exemplify the criteria established for the Notables Award. Books considered for this annual list are works of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry written for children, grades K-8. The books must meet one or more of the following criteria:

• deal explicitly with language, such as plays on words, word origins, or the history of language;
•demonstrate uniqueness in the use of language or style;
•invite child response or participation.

         In addition, books are to:

•have an appealing format;
•be of enduring quality;
•meet generally accepted criteria of quality for the genre in which they are written.

2012 Notable Children’s Books in the Language Arts 

A Butterfly Is Patient, by Diana Hutts Aston, illustrated by Sylvia Long, published by Chronicle Books.

A Monster Calls, by Patrick Ness, published by Candlewick.

Addie on the Inside, by James Howe, published by Atheneum.

Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart, by Candace Fleming, published by Schwartz & Wade.

Balloons over Broadway, by Melissa Sweet, published by Houghton Mifflin.

Bluefish, by Pat Schmatz, published by Candlewick.

BookSpeak: Poems about Books, by Laura Purdie Salas, illustrated by Josee Bisaillon, published by Clarion.

Breadcrumbs, by Anne Ursu, published by Walden Pond.

Dead End in Norvelt, by Jack Gantos, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Heart and Soul, by Kadir Nelson, published by Balzer + Bray.

Hound Dog True, by Linda Urban, published by Harcourt.

Inside Out & Back Again, by Thanhha Lai, published by Harper.

Lemonade: And Other Poems Squeezed from a Single Word, by Bob Raczka, published by Roaring Brook Press.

Me...Jane, by Patrick McDonnell, published by Little, Brown.

Okay for Now, by Gary Schmidt, published by Clarion.

Over and Under the Snow, by Kate Messner, illustrated by Christopher Silas Neal, published by Chronicle Books.

Pablo Neruda: Poet of the People, by Monica Brown, illustrated by Julie Paschkis, published by Henry Holt.

Passing the Music Down, by Sarah Sullivan, illustrated by Barry Root, published by Candlewick.

Requieum: Poems of the Terezin Ghetto, by Paul Janezko, published by Candlewick.

Shout! Shout it Out!, by Denise Fleming, published by Henry Holt.

Stars, by Mary Lynn Ray, illustrated by Marla Frazee, published by Beach Lane.

The Cazuela That the Farm Maiden Stirred, by Samantha R. Vamos, illustrated by Rafael Lopez, published by Charlesbridge.

The Cheshire Cheese Cat, by Carmen Agra Deedy and Randall Wright, illustrated by Barry Moser, published by Peachtree.

The Friendship Doll, by Kirby Larson, published by Delacorte.

The Great Wall of Lucy Wu, by Wendy Wan-long Shang, published by Scholastic.

The Scorpio Races, by Maggie Stiefvater, published by Scholastic.

These Hands, by Margaret H. Mason, illustrated by Floyd Cooper, published by Houghton Mifflin.

True…Sort of, by Katherine Hannigan, published by Greenwillow.

Underground, by Shane W. Evans, published by Roaring Brook Press.

Won Ton: A Cat Tale Told in Haiku, by Lee Wardlaw, illustrated by Eugene Yelchin, published by Henry Holt.



NCBLA 2012 Committee: April Bedford—Chair
Donalyn Miller, Nancy Roser, Tracy Smiles, Yoo Kyung Sung, Barbara Ward, Trish Bandre
Mary Lee Hahn—Past Chair

World Read Aloud Day

Flickr Creative Commons Photo by Ben Bunch

Today is World Read Aloud Day. I have been considering and reconsidering read aloud in print for 10 years and in classroom practice for almost 30 years. When I attempt to distill the power of read aloud, it always comes down to COMMUNITY.

Read aloud builds a community of readers.

Read aloud is the common thread that ties together all the listeners in the classroom. It gives them books in common, authors in common, stories in common, and characters in common. Read aloud is when we think together, laugh together, and sometimes cry together.

Read aloud is the dock where we tie up all of our reading canoes, the airport where we land our reading airplanes, the parking lot where we park our reading cars.

Read aloud is a movie theater, where everyone in the audience gets the same soundtrack, even though the screen and the pictures are inside each head.

Read aloud is what solitary readers can do together. It’s a book club, only better, because the conversations don’t just happen after everyone has read the book in isolation. You talk about the book all the way through. Sometimes there’s no time left over to read the book because you’ve spent so much time talking about it. And that’s okay, because read aloud has a permanent spot on the classroom’s daily schedule. The book will be there, waiting for us tomorrow. We can plan on read aloud. We can depend on read aloud.

Read aloud builds readers.

Read aloud is the constant in the changing swirl of classroom content. It’s the learning time that demands both the most and the least of a learner. It’s a time, I was told by a student once, to “learn without trying.” The listener takes from the read aloud what he or she can or will on a day-to-day basis.

Read aloud might be the book that none of the listeners would ever read independently. Read aloud provides a life vest, a climbing harness, a parachute, a safety net to support readers through topics or ideas or genres or events in history that they could never or would never attempt on their own. Read aloud stretches minds. Read aloud opens doors. Read aloud breaks down barriers.

Read aloud cannot be measured or programized or standardized or equalized or regimented. It is organic. Everything depends on the teacher, the book, and the listeners. Read aloud can never be the same thing twice. Read aloud is an art, not a science. The reader paints meaning with book choice, inflection, intonation, sound effects, pauses, and discussion. The listener begins by viewing the reader’s paintings, but often ends up inhabiting the paintings – becoming the characters, experiencing the settings, living the story.

Build can mean construct, establish, or increase. Read aloud builds community, and read aloud builds readers.

(cross-posted on LitWorld, the World Read Aloud Day Blog)