Word Choice in Poetry

In our recent poetry mini-lessons, we have worked on how our word choices and our endings for our poems affect the way our readers experience the poems. Recently we worked together to come up with words that describe and tell about spiders. Then we drew from those words in two different ways to make two different poems. The resulting poems showed us how important the word choice and the end of a poem are. We talked about how a good poem can leave us with a clear picture in our mind and often with clear feelings. Here are the two poems:

Quiet Spider
Quiet spider
Patient spider
Spinning
Weaving
Twirling
Long, thin, silky threads
Making a silvery, soft
whirly, twirly web!
Wow!

Creepy Spiders
Spiders, spiders, spiders!
Creepy, creepy spiders!
Smooth, shiny black widows
Hairy, bushy tarantulas
Crawling on their 8 legs
Crawling and sneaking
Up on me!
Ahhhhhhhh!

As Quiet as

Last week we read the book, Quick as a Cricket, by Audrey Wood. We have used her work to inspire us as we write poetry. A couple of days later we talked about what we are working toward when we center ourselves for our quiet settling in time at the beginning of the school day. We brainstormed comparisons for quiet as, peaceful as, and calm as. Looking at our list, I chose one, as peaceful as a lamb, to model how to stretch it out to make it a fuller image. Drawing ideas from the students, I added to our simple simile. "As peaceful as a lamb" became "as peaceful as a lamb sleeping on soft hay in a grassy field." Then each student worked with a partner to stretch out some of the other comparisons from our list. They came up with some lovely images, which we will make into a book and illustrate together.

As quiet as a cloud floating in the blue, blue sky.
As calm as a bird in a nest at the top of the tree at night.
As peaceful as a kitten sleeping in its soft, cozy bed.
As quiet as meditating on a cloud drifting along.
As calm as a butterfly drinking some nectar.
As peaceful as a sky kitten sleeping on a cloud in the sky.
As quiet as a little mouse snug in its warm, cozy home.
As calm as a dove flying over the ocean.
As peaceful as a swan swimming in a beautiful lake.
As quiet as a dark, empty room in an abandoned house.
As calm as a lotus flower bending gently on a windy day.
As quiet as bark on a tree resting in the breeze.
As calm as the ocean on a windless night.
As quiet as a rabbit nibbling on clover in the spring.

Writing Poetry

We have been reading and writing poetry the past few weeks. For my lessons I draw from resources such as Regie Routman's Kids' Poems: Teaching First Graders to Love Writing Poetry (I love her emphasis on reading and talking about poetry by children) and Lucy Calkins and Stephanie Parson's Poetry: Powerful Thought in Tiny Packages, which is part of Units of Study for Primary Writing: A Yearlong Curriculum. I also have lessons of my own that I have developed over the years.

It is an exciting time as we explore this very different way of looking at and writing about the world.

Mystery Lemur

A little over a week ago a box appeared on the bench where we gather each day. On it was a velvet frog with a word balloon above it. The frog introduced himself as Fred and invited the children to submit yes/no questions about who was in the box. They excitedly wrote questions. The next day "Fred" had answered their questions, giving them clues. More questions, then answers followed. The students worked to think of good yes/no questions that would give them helpful information. After a week several of the students had solved the mystery of who was in the box. They wrote "Is it a lemur?" and they got the answer, "Yes!"

So we opened the box and met Lee the lemur. Now students will take turns taking Fred and Lee home for a night. Fred and Lee have a backpack that they "ride" in along with a journal for students to record their adventures with Fred and Lee.

Word Wall-Encouraging its active use

We have continued to add 5 frequently used words to our Word Wall each week. Every week each student gets 5 words from the Word Wall to practice in Word Study 5 Ways.

Recently I read a post at the Stenhouse Blog as part of their Quick Tip Tuesday that talked about ways to make the children more familiar with where words are on the Word Wall, so that they are more likely to use it as a resource as they write. It was thus interesting to me when not long after that one of my students, Leo, thought of a new way to practice his words. He said he could use the pointer and find each one on the Word Wall. His idea proved popular with the other students, so now I have added it to the list of Word Study 5 Ways list, calling it "Word Wall Find."

Chunk Lists

As a language warm-up some days, I present the students with a "chunk," a frequently used cluster of letters (also known as a phoneme or rime.) They work to think up words that end in that chunk, and we make a list of them. We add each list to a growing "Chunk Wall" above the chalkboard. I often draw the chunk from the list of phonograms in the appendices of Word Matters: Teaching Phonics and Spelling in the Reading/Writing Classroom by Gay Su Pinnell and Irene C. Fountas. They helpfully identify the 37 most frequently used phonograms by putting asterisks by them.

Pattern Book Celebration

Students have been hard at work on their pattern books. Last week each student chose one of the pattern books that they have written to get ready for our celebration of pattern books this week. Editing points this time included being sure that there is space between words, that word wall words are spelled conventionally, and that sentences have punctuation at the end. Once the books were ready, we made covers. Yesterday we had our celebration. Each student had a choice of reading the whole book or reading a selection from it. After the books were shared, we “toasted” our efforts with cookies.