In Residence: Fibbing about Outer Space

Welcome back to Northfield Elementary School, where I am in residence this month.

(What does "in residence" mean? I explain it all in this post.)

On Monday, we looked at scientific third grade Fibonacci poems. Those poems were grounded here on Earth. But outer space is also part of science and nature.

Today, let's head to the stars with third grade Fibs. I love the scientific facts that Jay includes in  his poem.

Gravity
by Jay K.

Gs
pull.
Suction
releases.
Can be strong or weak.
Secures all of us to the ground.
There's not that much gravitational pull on the moon.
If there was no gravity, we would be floating around
     in outer space with no air.

From NASA

Lindsay starts in outer space, then returns us to Earth.

What Space Is
by Lindsay H.

Stars
Space
Planets
Galaxy
Comets and the Sun
Go away as I now wake up,
Many miles away from my planet where I live.

From NASA

Dylan uses onomatopoeia to think about the future of our world. Look how the last line of Dylan's poem adds an unexpected twist.

Robots
by Dylan

Clang
Crank
Robots
Everywhere
Robots rule the world
Robots are low on batteries

Check out what today's robots are capable of: 



Great job, third graders.

Thank you to the Northfield teachers and families for giving me permission to share the students poems! I will continue to post student poems until our Poets' Tea in June.

In Residence: Fibbing in Third Grade

Writerly Friends, this month I am in residence at Northfield Elementary School.

What does "in residence" mean, exactly?

Fifteen years ago, when our family moved to Maryland, I applied to my state arts council's "Arts-in-Education" program. Through grants, often matched by a school's cultural arts budged, the program sends opera singers, playwrights, painters, bookmakers, mosaic artists, dancers, and others into schools around the state.

Some artists visit for a day, conducting assemblies. Artists-in-residence like me work with smaller groups, over a longer period of time.

The teachers and I have lost count of how many years I've been visiting Northfield -- at least eight. Instead of meeting with the whole school, I work with one grade: third!

There are five third grade classes at Northfield this year. Every day that I visit the school, I work with two different classroom groups.

The grant pays for a certain number of sessions. It works out to five workshops for each third grade class, a few meetings with the third grade educators, and a Poets Tea at the end of the residency.

At the Poets' Tea, we show off work like these
third grade portrait poems in response to fine art.

I'm sharing this background now because ...

this week I make my first appearance as a regular children's poetry blogger at Michelle Heindrich Barnes blog, Today's Little Ditty! I'll cover the poet-in-the-schools angle. Other members of Michelle's poetry team include Renee LaTulippe, Buffy Silverman, and Carrie Clickard.

I love having a long-standing relationship with a school, where I return  year after year. Older students see me in the hall and say, "It's the poet! I remember when you came to my class!"

We started this year's residency with Fibonacci poems, a form invented by Poetry Friday blogger Gregory K. Pincus. 

If you'd like to check out my Fib workshop lesson plan, you can read it at this post. 

Since we spend time talking about the Fibonacci math sequence and how it describes a pattern we can see in nature, I encourage the third graders to choose a scientific topic for their fibs. Today's poems are about plants and animals.

Plants
by Alastair

plants
life
green world
beautiful
soil, water, and sun
nature within the shining Earth

Green Earth, from NASA's Earth Observatory site.

In a Fibonacci poem, the poet starts with a small idea ... a single word, but he must use description, detail, and sometimes action -- as in this young man's exciting poem -- to reach those longer lines.

Untitled

AH!
Run!
Be scared.
Shark Attack!
They want to eat you.
It is not fun getting chomped up.

What I love about the Fib form is how it encourages stretching. The poet isn't simply building from one, two, and three syllables on a line to several syllables. As the poem develops, so must the complexity of thought. Watch how Emily uses this technique to build to a 13-syllable line.

Chameleons
by Emily M.

Green
Scales
Climbs trees
Camouflage
Lives in rain forests
Off ground, away from predators
Mysterious looking, thinking of a plan to escape

Meller's Chameleon, from National Geographic

Thank you to the Northfield teachers and families for giving me permission to share the students poems! I hope to post new poems regularly throughout May until our Poets' Tea in June.

From Aloe to Zinc: 2014 Poetry Project

Writerly Friends, I skipped yesterday’s Pantone®   Poetry post. The kids were home from school. It was a good day for cleaning out the basement, and – to be honest – I needed a day away from the computer.

Let’s count today as Day 5 of the Pantone ®  Poetry Project. All this month, I invite you to write or draw in response to interior paint colors.

(Need the deets? Find them here.) Tomorrow, Poetry Friday, we’ll combine Day 6 (Kombu Green, Sugar Coral) and Day 7 (Jazzy).

If we can forget about my lapse, I promise not to tell you about the dead beetles, dried to the color of Bronze Mist, which I had to vacuum out of the basement window sill. Ew.

I promised you Jane Elkin’s Aloe pants first. Totally ew.

PANTone Aloe

By J. C. Elkin

Aloe, jeans I had to return.
You looked like pearl on the screen.
So much for shopping online
Where colors are not what they seem.

Aloe
Pantone ®  17-0620

Margaret Simon used the aloe plant, instead of the drab Pantone®   shade, to write her poem.

She says, “I used Google images to find an image of an aloe.  It was a spiral, so I decided to try a Fib poem. After a hard rain today, this is what came.”

From BlueSci Magazine

Winter Rain (or February Fib)

By Margaret Simon

Zinc

sky

begins

to glimmer

fermenting shadows

into humidified bronze mist.

If you have never heard of Fibs, or Fibonacci poems, read this New York Times article about their inventor, Poetry Friday blogger Greg Pincus.

A few weeks ago, I won a copy of Margaret Simon’s new book, Illuminate. The poems in this small volume were written in response to a collection of Christmas cards hand-drawn by Margaret’s father, John Gibson.

I asked Margaret for permission to share her poem, “Annunciation.” The poem spoke to me because it called to mind one of my favorite paintings:

The Annunciation
by Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1898
Oil on Canvas 57” x 71.5”
Philadelphia Museum of Art

I met this painting nearly 20 years ago. My high school students and I were on a field trip at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I was raised Jewish, so it wasn’t the religious aspect of the painting that spoke to me. Instead, I was moved by its simplicity. In Tanner's image, Mary looked like a real girl of the ancient Middle East. The angel was not a winged, haloed human, but a glowing shaft of warm, bronze light.

Annunciation

            An angel appeared out of the night.

I am not real

I am a dust, a shadow,

a sprinkling of dots on a page,

A lonely seraphim

with open arms

at the royal gate.

I am crowned

by the moon’s light,

draped in the darkness of forewings.

I pray

my message is welcomed.

I conceal lost edges.

The sacrament,

this new birth

unveils me, makes me real

as breath.

"Annunciation," from Illuminate by Margaret Gibson Simon, all right reserved. 

The poem was written in response to this image by John Gibson, which also appears in Illuminate.

Illuminate is available at Amazon.

Margaret’s lines “I am a dust, a shadow/ a sprinkling of dots on a page,” calls to mind today’s second color: Bronze Mist.

Bronze Mist
Pantone ®  17-0843

Thanks to all of you who sent in a poem for Day 5, and for giving me permission to share your work at Author Amok.

Clever Linda Baie noticed that Aloe, Bronze Mist, and Zinc take us from A to Z.

Finding Face

From aloe to zinc,
she bought her beauty 
at the nearby Walgreen’s,
filling the cart
with an alphabet of 
make-up,
rejecting Mother Nature’s
paint job.

Linda Baie ©All Rights Reserved

Zinc
Pantone ®  17-2601

Patricia VanAmburg used the metallic nature of Zinc as inspiration for her poem.

Commodity Market (for zinc)

I asked my broker to buy
silver and gold but he
only offered shares of 
mining and manufacture—no
now I need a krugerrand
in my hand—and some
100% non-toxic zinc sinkers
that won’t leach like lead
or words from my dead father:
“Don’t take any wooden nickels.”

I had another kind of Zinc (Oxide) – and the wintry weather – in mind when I started playing around with this senryu.

Version 1

snowman in summer

lifeguard slathered with sunblock

zinc ointment

Version 2

hot beach, snowman

concentrates, folds zinc white arms

sunblocked lifeguard

Let me know which one you like best and why.

Let’s get out of the cold and snow for a moment. The Day 6 colors are a little more tropical. And Day 7 – it’s downright hot.

Day 6: Sugar Coral
Pantone ®  16-1640

Day 6: Kombu Green
Pantone ®  19-0417

Day 7: Jazzy
Pantone ®  18-1950

If you’d like to share your writing, or doodling, in response to any or all of these colors, read the instructions (with writing prompts) onhow to join this project here. Or simply leave a comment with your contribution.

Poetry Friday: A Spiralling Storm of Fib Poems

It has been stormy and scary in Northfield Elementary's third grade this week. Like many of us with curious natures, the young poets I'm working with love extremes. Whether it's wild weather or the antics of dangerous animals, drama always makes for interesting writing.

This is the last of our Fibonacci poems. You can read my full lesson plan here.

Here's a great video explaining Fibonacci numbers in nature.



And since we were being all scientific, here are more third grade Fibonacci nature poems. I like how Erin introduces a character in the last, long line of her weather poem.

Erin H.

Thunderstorms

Storm

Cool

Scary

Thunderstorm

Thunder and lightning

Beautiful, dangerous, awesome

Keeps you awake at night with the boom of thunder

Read about storm science at Weather.Com

Julian starts us off with weather (A snow day? No school!) and then shifts to thinking about how winter weather affects non-human animals.

Julian C.

Ice

Snow

Snowballs

Schools days off!

In certain places,

Animals are hibernating

Caves have bears and birds go south to find a warmer place.

Find this classic picture book at Amazon.

Isabella's Fib begins with a description of her topic, reptiles, then lists some great examples... with a  little surprise in the final syllable.

Isabella M.

Reptiles

Scales,

Claws,

Scary

Reptiles like

Lizards, snakes, gators,

And those big crocodiles! Help!

Remember our reptilian friend from the Poetry Postcard series?

Poetry Friday is brought to us today by our gracious host, Anastasia Suen at BookTalking. I see she's been thinking mathematically (in literature)  too!

Next week, I'll be sharing the third graders opposites poems. They did a great job working on organizing poetic ideas into two stanzas.

Thanks to the Northfield families, students and teachers for inviting me back again this year. All of the poems in this series have been posted with permission.

Third Grade Fibs

Last week, I taught the Northfield E.S. third graders how to fib.

How to write a fib, that is. We kicked off my annual poetry residency writing Fibonacci poems. The students loved the combination of math (we talked about the Fibonacci sequence and how it is derived from a mathematical formula), science (we looked at Fibonacci spirals in nature) and poetry (we figured out that a poem could follow the Fibonacci numbers by counting out syllables).

I use Sarah C. Campbell's book as a jumping off point for the Fibonacci lesson.

You can find my full Fibonacci lesson plan at this Fib post.

Here are some of the third graders' scientific poems. I like how Ethan combines the largeness of space with a small moment -- counting stars -- in his poem.

Ethan H.

Space

Stars

Planets

Some just found

Circling the sun

Counting the stars on a bright night

From http://www.destateparks.com/activities/stargazing/
Our local astronomy club is the Howard County Astronomical League.
They hold star gazing events for families.

Julian's weather-related Fibonacci poem tells a dramatic story.

Julian H.

Boom!

Whoosh!

Get down

Tornadoes

Go to the basement

Bring a radio and some food

Are we all here? One,  two, three, four, five. Good.

     We’re all here.

The tornado stopped but we’re trapped in the basement.

     Crack. Light. The police found us. We are safe.

From tornadofacts.com

Once we realized that dinosaurs are a scientific subject, Daniel was ready to write his poem.

Daniel C.

Dinosaur

Egg

Born

Reptile

Meat-eater

Hunting a Troodon

T-Rex are very dangerous

Learn about the Troodon at National Geographic.

And Zach was also interested in the power of the weather.

Zach B.

Hurricane

Rain

Hail

High winds

Powerful

Very deadly storm

Can destroy the whole ocean coast

Hurricanes form a Fibonacci spiral.
This is Super Storm Sandy at beforeitsnews.com

Want more fibs by kids? Read some here.

I'll post more third grade poems tomorrow for Poetry Friday, and that's no fib.