Big and Small, Happy, Sad, Opposite Poems to Make You Glad

Sun or snow?
Yes! Not no.
Fast or slow?
Stop. Then, go!

The Northfield third graders have been working on opposite poems. The full lesson is available here.

How do we get these emerging writers to think beyond writing a simple list of objects? Our model poem, "Swift Things Are Beautiful," was about fast and slow things in nature. Why didn't Elizabeth Coatsworth just put together her poem like this:

Swift Things Are Beautiful (List Version)

Swift Things Are Beautiful:          And Slow Things Are Beautiful:
Swallows, deer, lightning,             Sunset, waves, ember,
rivers, meteors, wind,                  opening flower, ox.
horses, runners.

This weekend, the Preakness is running in Baltimore.
Look for strong-withered horses!

We set up our brainstorming for this lesson much like the above -- a simple t-chart listing items for our poem. We think of three to four items (at least) for each stanza of our opposites poem. But how to take these lists and spin a poem from them?

Many of the students write animal poems: fast/slow, big/small, water/land all lend themselves to animals opposites. I ask these students to give each animal an action. I have an old student sample to read as a model. My favorite line in that poem is "crabs are pinching."

The Blue Crab is Maryland's State Crustacean.
Find a list of state symbols here.

Jeffrey took this advice to heart, extending the animal actions into descriptive lines for his animal opposites poem.

Jeffrey C.

Animals Big and Small Can Be Clever

Big animals can be clever:

Elephants picking up grass with their nose,

Whales squirting water out like a hose,

Giraffes picking leaves from tall trees.

Small animals can be clever:

Mice sneaking away with cheese,

Hummingbirds moving their wings

As fast as a cheetah in the grass,

Grasshoppers jumping around.

Visit BioKids online!

And, as I point out to the students, it's fine if two students write on the same topic. Each person's mind works in unique ways, so the resulting poems will be different. Here is Sam's take on big and small animals.

Samuel H.

Some Animals Are Big

Some animals are big:

Elephants stomping in the mud,

Whales swimming through the water,

Rhinos charging at each other,

Hippos diving into the water.

Some animals are small:

Mice running through the grass,

Beetles flying in the air,

Chipmunks digging into trees,

Turtles swimming

Peacefully in the water.

The Diamondback Terrapin is the Maryland State Reptile.

Ashlyn's Happy-Sad poem starts as a simple list of items. However, in stanza two, her poem moves beyond the list, taking a turn with the word "If."

Ashlyn B.

Happy Things Are Wonderful.

Happy things are wonderful:

When you get an A+ on a test

Or get a massage for your feet.

You win your soccer game

And you get a surprise treat.

None of these things are lame.

Sad things are despicable.

If you hurt yourself

Or lose a toy

And cry for help

Yet no one bothers to come.

If this ever happens

Or comes to your mind,

Just think of the good things

And you will be fine.

Tomorrow, the last group of opposites poems. Then we will build on two elements from this lesson -- brainstorming opposites and using action to describe -- for a workshop on portrait poems.

Poetry Friday: You're Doing Math in Poetry?

Welcome, Northfield Elementary School poets! It's Poetry Friday!

This week's host is Liz at Growing Wild, and that's no Fib.
Stop by for more poetry links from around the Kidlitosphere.

This week, I began one of my favorite annual poetry residencies at Northfield E.S. I have leading poetry workshops in the third grade for seven years. Maybe eight. The teachers and I lost count.

What's new this year? The Common Core curriculum has come to Maryland and classroom teachers are adjusting to the new standards. I've heard -- and observed with my own 7th grader -- the good, the bad and the ugly of the Common Core.

 

One element that people are shaking their heads about: writing in math. In middle school, it looks like a three paragraph essay explaining how you solved a problem.

In my poetry classes, it looks like this:

A mathematical graph of the Fibonacci sequence PLUS

science (Fibonacci spirals in nature) EQUALS

poetry?

The Northfield third graders are a brainy bunch. They quickly saw that we could take the Fibonacci numbers and use them to count syllables, creating a poem that matches the numerical sequence.

 

To read my full Fibonacci Poetry lesson plan, please visit last year's FIB POST. Also, check out Poetry Friday blogger and Fib inventor Greg Pincus's explanation of the form.

 

Common Core is doable... when you give teachers some flexibility to be creative and teach. The Northfield poets deftly wrote POEMS about SCIENCE using a MATHEMATICAL sequence. Let's give them some snaps. (We don't clap in poetry class. Snaps put us in a rhythmic mood.)

 

Here are two poets from Ms. Pruitt's homeroom, and their super, scientific, sequential Fibonacci poems.

Ally K.

Bees

smell

nectar

flowers

buzzing when they fly

sense of responsibility

www.texasbees.com

I found Ally's last line to be fascinating. Bees are following their instincts when they collect pollen. Yet, their behavior is responsible for the health of the plants they pollinate.

Another Pruitt poet took a favorite subject, orangutans, and went all the way to 34 syllables with his scientific information about the primates.

 

Teddy J.

Look!

Wow!

In the

treetops there

are orangutans

swinging from vine to vine. Then they

jump around to the ground to scoop up durians. They

then climb back up to the tops of the trees to make a leafy nest to sleep in, but the

baby one doesn’t want to go to sleep. The mama orangutan sings her little one a song and

     he goes to sleep. Good night, “forest people!”

www.primates.com

Originally, Teddy wrote "scoop up yummy fruit" in line 7. But he knew so much about orangutans -- I had a feeling he might know the name of this primate's favorite fruit. Sure enough, he did, and "durians" was the perfect number of syllables for the line.

Durian fruit from hungrytravels.com

I'll be blogging about our poetry workshops for the next several weeks. Thanks to the teachers and families at Northfield for inviting me to visit again this year, and for giving me permission to share their talented third graders' amazing poems.

Portrait Poems Part 2

Happy Poetry Friday, Friends!

Some quick news, before today's poetry lesson. This week, I found out that my ekphrastic poem, "Fringe," was a finalist for the 2012 Rita Dove Poetry Awards. I am thrilled!

Those of you who remember me writing about the mud run I'm doing with my teenage son, it's this weekend. Fingers crossed that I survive.

Last, if you are in the Westminster, MD area, I am reading at the Carroll County Arts Council Thursday 5/24 at 7 PM. Poet Bruce Sager will be my partner in rhyme.

Yesterday, I introduced portrait poems to the Northfield third grade. We looked at a student poem in response to The Scream. (Yesterday's post, part one of the lesson, is here.)

Today, we are going to take a poem walk through the model poem, Shonto Begay's "Down Highway 163." About a year ago, I exchanged emails with Mr. Begay regarding this lesson. If you'd like to read our conversation, that post is here. I am grateful for his permission to share his work.

First, I share a little of Mr. Begay's background, which kids (and I) find both heart-breaking and fascinating. Then, we look at his painting, "Down Highway 163."

We list the facts of the painting, all of the things we can see. Kids get the idea quickly. We can say the person is cold because she is wrapped in a blanket and there is snow. We can't assume the person is homeless. That's not a fact we can see.

FYI -- if you live on the East Coast, as I do, your students might mistake that butte in the background for a building or an orange cloud. I usually take a minute to tell them what a butte is, often showing them a photograph of the real Highway 163 in Utah.

After we have all our facts, we can start the fun part of this exercise...imagining. I've had classes come up with many crazy and wonderful stories about this painting. In a recent one, the woman's sack was filled with cash she'd been saving for a long time. She was hitching a ride on the truck so she could get to the used car lot and buy her own car!

Now, it's time to see what the artist imagined about this character.

DOWN HIGHWAY 163
by Shonto Begay

The old lady in the back of the truck
Has seen days much colder
Someone's grandmother
On the highway towards Kayenta
Only her face shows from a faded blanket (5)
Her features are strong
Maybe she is related to the people in the front
Laughing and warm
Or maybe she is catching a ride to the trading post
She may even be returning (10)
From the health clinic in Monument Valley
The back of the truck is cold
Among old spare tires and chains
Shovels and bare metal box
She is no stranger to Old Man Winter (15)
She has seen many winters
It has been colder

Posted with permission of the author.

As I mentioned with last week's poem walk, I let the students guide the discussion. I have my "hoped for" points in mind. Most of the time, when I ask kids to share their favorite parts of the poem, the children will pull these lines out themselves.

Line 1: If students are stuck with their own poems, they can use this opening line strategy -- tell who, tell where.

Line 2: We'll come back to the connotations of the word "cold" by the end of the discussion and see how it threads through the poem. Many elementary schoolers have heard the idiom, "giving the cold shoulder" or understand (thanks to reality TV) "that was cold" is an appropriate response to an insult. The point is, "cold" can be used to describe disrespectful treatment -- not just the temperature. This is not an easy idea for all third graders, some of whom are concrete thinkers, so I'll need to spend time on this concept -- with their teacher's help.

Line 3: At some point in the discussion, I will ask, "Would you treat your grandmother this way?"

Line 6: How do we know this person is strong (see final two lines)? The students find this line as evidence. We talk about the idea that when a poet calls someone's facial features -- outer expression -- strong, that poet is suggesting the person is also strong on the inside.

Line 7-8: See my question about Line 3. We start to realize that it's pretty shocking that this elderly woman has been stuck in the back of a truck -- in the middle of winter -- by the drivers. Her family? We might talk about the idea that in Begay's Navajo culture, elders are treated with great respect.

Line 11: Some children will pick up on the idea that the woman might be sick. That makes us more bothered that she is in the back of the truck and not being cared for.

Line 13-14: Since we discussed the junk in the back of the truck (tire, shovel, box) when we looked at the painting, the students understand the metaphor here. If our woman is back there with the trash, how is she being treated? Like trash.

Line 15: Some children have not heard of "Old Man Winter." Explain that it's an expression similar to Mother Nature or Jack Frost.

Lines 16-17: We come back to the thread of "cold" layers in the poem now, both the weather and the treatment of this woman. The children will point out, when I ask them what they like about these two lines, that the woman is a survivor. They "get" that she has been through worse winters/experiences and will live through this.

After we read the poem one more time, I shower the kids with praise. It takes a lot of deep thinking to discuss a poem like "Down Highway 163" and they've done a great job.

At Northfield, we ask the kids to bring newspaper and magazine clippings for their portraits. The teachers and I usually bring in extras. While a simple portrait will work, I like to look for images that have story potential -- details, style of dress, or a setting that makes me say, "What's happening here?"

If the kids get stuck while they're writing, I suggest that they use Shonto Begay's strategy. Begin a new thread of imagining with the word "maybe."

In Mary's poem, there is a subtle suggestion of conflict between the girl going to a dance and the parents taking her photo.

A Pretty Teenager Going to a Dance

by Mary

My long blue dress with

brown curly hair and sparkly earrings

with the trees in the background

Me posing for a picture

But I want to go to a dance

to laugh and smile

dance with my friends

It's my first time so let me

have fun and laugh

talk with my friends

It will be the best time I ever

had with all my friends and me

Zoe's poem captures a friendship between two very different girls. (There was only one girl in the picture Zoe wrote in response to.)

My Crazy Friend Daisy

by Zoe

I see my friend

and what do I think

Well, I think she's crazy

in that pose

With her glasses on

doing her funny dance

I'm just sitting there watching

What a sight!

What a crazy friend.

But she still is fun

that funny friend of mine

in that pose

Oh, what a great friend!

Amber wrote about a fashion photograph.

Fancy Model Or...

by Amber

Walking on glass.

Wow, so hard.

How can she do it?

Oh, I don't know!

Or maybe a model

looking so cute.

Fancy necklace or bracelet or dress.

Fancy model walking on glass.

Feeling proud like "Wow, I'm doing it."

Walking up and down

above the clouds

like the queen of the word

or space.

Glasses in her hand, hand on her hip

seeing herself

lovely and sweet

like a professional model.

Oh, she is.

What is she thinking?

Looking up, not down,

focusing on her.

Her her her her her

just her.

Getting dizzy spinning around

turning, spinning, walking, turning.

Lilly's magazine clipping was simple: A young girl with a seashell by her ear.

The Waves

by Lilly

Ffffff

Fffff

Listen

Fffff

The waves are talking

I can hear them well

Ffffff

Through the shell the waves

are coming

I almost think they're coming

at me

Fffff

The waves are talking.

I'll have a few more wonderful portrait poems on Monday, and then we'll move on to food poems. Yum!

Today's Poetry Friday host is Katya at Write. Sketch. Repeat. Thank, Katya!

Weather Tanka

Here are two more tanka poems from Northfield Elementary third graders. Both happen to be about the weather. Not surprising -- that's all we've been talking about here in central Maryland.

You'll notice that Sean and Lowen paid attention to the form's rules. The upper poem in a tanka includes detailed observations. The lower poem expresses emotion.

See the previous post for my full tanka lesson.

Rain by Sean C.

Trapped inside my house,
I stared out the wet window.
Rain, the plainest taste.
It seemed to be prolonging...
I feel lonely as can be.

"Rain, the plainest taste" -- what a vivid and evocative image. The  next poem is also full of sensory images. I love how Lowen used onomatopoeia without explaining the meaning -- that allows me to picture what's happening in my imagination.


Snow
by Lowen D.

White covers the ground.
When my mom says, "School's out,"
it's cold and it hurts.
I love snow. Shh shh burr burr.
It's so fun to play in.

Thanks, once again, to my students at Northfield and their families. I enjoy sharing these wonderful poems with you -- but I couldn't do it without their permission and enthusiasm for poetry.

Shoe Odes

The model poem for this lesson in writing odes (which I usually use for middle school, but adapted for elementary with great results) is Gary Soto's wonderful "Ode to Pablo's Tennis Shoes."

Kids' lit agent Michael Stearns (Firebrand) told me it's Soto's most anthologized poem. No wonder. It's got some juicy similes, which I asked my third graders to aim for in their odes.

It's not often a teacher asks you to take off one shoe, put it on your desk, and examine it. We had a blast with this activity!

Ethan and I discovered the word "Raptor" -- a model name -- on his sneaker.

Poet: Ethan K. Dear E-Raptor, you taste like rubber bands. You feel like leather seats. You smell like fresh dirt. You sound like fireworks crackling. You look like neon green lasers. You’re my favorite shoes.

Juicy similes? Check!

In the poem below, I notice Mayur responding to the quiet emotions at the end of Soto's ode.

Poet: Mayur K. Ode to Mayur’s Shoes They are as fast as a cheetah, rain beaten. They are kicking a kickball, and they smell like the sewer. But I don’t care because they sound like rain drops when I walk. They remind me of a spider because they are all brown and dark colors. When I come back from school, I put them in the closet near the door. Now it’s night. I can hear my dad snoring and my mom laughing to the America’s Funniest Videos.

More shoe odes from the Northfield E.S. third graders tomorrow. Thanks again to Northfield's third grade team and our young poets' families for permission to post these poems.