overheard in Sunday School

This year at my Unitarian Universalist congregation we're using a new (to us) approach to religious education known as the WRM or Workshop Rotation Model.  Rather than sending same-grade groups of kids to the same class with the same teachers each Sunday, the kids are divided into several multiage groups and each month a handful of different types of lessons are taught around a theme.  The groups rotate through each lesson over the course of the month, with new volunteers teaching each month. 

In February, when our theme was Truth, I offered a poetry workshop.  I worked with three groups of  3rd-5th graders, and our RE Director worked with our one group of K-2nd graders.  As I had hoped, UU kids were especially receptive to poetry and dove in, producing some really first-rate work in our one hour together.  (Someday I'll write a post about what I mean about UU's and poetry.)

I used a poem from my collection Squeeze about a special rock to introduce the idea of an "outside truth" (the sensory, scientific facts about a thing) and an "inside truth"--the personal experiences and imaginations about a thing that are equally meaningful and true.  We provided some interesting nature objects as inspiration, and challenged the children to be aware, as they wrote, about whether they were expressing the outside truth or the inside truth about their subject.  Even the adult guides for each group wrote, and one of them, Danie Smallwood, a photographer, took really striking photos of the objects for an illustrated anthology of the poems, which we'll copy for the congregation to enjoy.

Here are the first two poems in the series, each of them first and only drafts.  Enjoy!













Starfish 

With five points sticking out

Pops of white bursting out

Light brown spots

Hard to see

Like the bottom with a honey-colored line that seems to be

Pouring out

Woven under

With small holes

That to me look as if they are going to break open

Unlike the ocean

Harsh, never stopping, never having an opening

 

~Katie, 5th grade

 Light Wing

Light wing, bumpy wing,

Light wing, colorful, and bumpy.

Yellow dots, black dots,

Light wing in my hands.  

 

~ Zachary, 2nd grade

 

The roundup for this week's Poetry Friday is over at GottaBook with Greg. Go gear up for National Poetry Month!