Sunday, April 13, 2014

Our Wonderful World.13



Details of my Poetry Month Project can be found here.


Wikipedia



I'm photogenic
posing with waves, fog, sunsets
expensive "steel harp"

©Mary Lee Hahn


Carol has a pair of poems for the Empire State Building at Carol's Corner.

Kevin also has a haiku today for the GGB.



I wanted to write short today so I would have time to share some of my students' writing.

For our Poetry Friday lesson, I shared my poems for the week with my students. (They didn't write with me this week. They were doing micro-research cause/effect paragraphs on slow and fast processes that change the earth.) I announced the theme of "Places" for their Poetry Friday reading or writing of poetry and sent them off to work. As always, they blew me away when we got back to share.

We heard poems from a wide range of poetry books:
Dinothesaurus: Prehistoric Poems and Paintings by Douglas Florian (the one about the T-Rex, perhaps at a museum or on site at a dig)
Stampede!: Poems to Celebrate the Wild Side of School by Laura Purdee Salas (the one about getting lost in a new school -- very appropriate since they visited their middle schools this week and are a delicious mixture of excitement and dread)
Out of This World: Poems and Facts about Space by Amy Sklansky (the one about blasting off -- our space expert has read a poem from this book just about EVERY Poetry Friday all year long!)
A World of Wonders: Geographic Travels in Verse and Rhyme by J. Patrick Lewis (I don't remember which poem, but perfect choice of books, eh?)

And we heard these originals (among others a bit too rough for publication just yet):


Catacombs

Here I go
off by myself
just a donkey
without a doubt.
Then I tripped
into a place.
It felt as if
I went 100 feet deep.
Then I realized
it was a tomb.
Three cheers for the donkey!
They thought I didn't have a clue.

by HF


Riddle

I am at a place where you can get whatever you desire.
You can have something as cool as the wind, or as spicy as fire.
I bet you will admire
the ones we have hired.
So can you guess where I am?

(Subway..."eat fresh")

by CS


If You Use Your Mind

China holds a conga line,
Egypt makes chocolate kisses,
Home is what's yours and mine,
America has famous Miss-es.

Earth holds land, sea, and sky,
but it would be nothing without creation.
Earth holds those who walk, swim and fly,
creatures of all ages.

Jungles are a line of I's,
pines are cones of ice cream,
snow makes lands of sparkly white,
ice cream that stands on tall mountains.

Liberty is a welcomer of copper green,
the sea is a place you long to see.
Palms hold food and water, too,
all these things are on earth for you.

by MC


Here's another MC wrote, inspired by Stonehenge:


Rain was falling on me,
only one place left to go.
Stone.

I sat against the smooth stone,
shaded slightly from the rain.
Alone.

The place seemed erie,
I wondered if anyone was there.
One.

I thought I could hear whispers,
but
it's just my imagination.

I thought I could see figures.
I thought I could feel hands.
I thought I could hear voices.

I thought.
I knew.

I knew there was someone --
no,
it's not my imagination.

I knew I could see figures.
I knew I could feel hands.
I knew I could hear voices.

I knew.
I wondered.

I wondered if it was my imagination --
maybe,
maybe not.

I wondered who the figures were.
I wondered if they were like me.
I wondered what they were trying to say.

I wondered.
I thought.

by MC




4 comments:

  1. Your students have great imaginations!

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  2. I like the mask poem, Mary Lee, the bridge so puffed up, a show-off maybe. And your students' poem are great, different voices and styles are good to see.

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  3. Amazing how much you can say in 17 syllables. Another gorgeous poem. And I loved "visiting" your classroom. I wish you'd write an article (or a book?) about poetry in your classroom. I think it would be amazing! Your kids' poems certainly are- such a range of voices and topics!

    Here are mine for tonight. I started here:

    “Bridges”

    I’ve crossed the
    Golden Gate
    Tappan Zee
    And Royal Gorge

    But I can’t cross
    the chasm
    separating
    me from you.

    © Carol Wilcox 2014



    And ended up here:


    “Bridge”

    San Francisco
    and Sausalito
    separated by
    fifty mile long
    ocean arm

    Engineers use
    one million tons
    of concrete
    enough steel cable
    to wrap round earth
    three times
    Twenty ton
    steel beams

    overcome
    brutal winds,
    tide and fog
    loss of life
    to construct
    two mile long bridge
    250 feet above
    choppy bay waters


    Building the Golden Gate
    seems ever
    so much easier

    than bridging
    the chasm

    between

    me

    and

    you.

    © Carol Wilcox 2014

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  4. I remember when I was teaching English how much I wanted my students to really let go and write... reading your students' poetry is nothing short of amazing. I second Carol's suggestion!

    Also, it's so nice to be back near "my" bridge, and to watch it posing with fog. ☺ I really like that -- it does pose with EVERYONE, and photobombs many, many pictures...

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