poetry friday arrives in PreK

I know, I know...you will exclaim, "What do you mean, Poetry Friday is only just arriving in PreK?!"  But, as the youth say, hear me out.

At most, a PreK student with perfect attendance has now spent a total of 44 days x 2.25 hours + 14 days x 1 hour (our Wednesdays are different) = 113 hours in school, of which .5h daily is free play time away from the screen and .2h daily is their time with specialists, leaving me 82.2 hours of instructional time.  

Wow.  That calculation is shocking even to me.  And let's not forget that every minute of that time has been spent on-screen.

OF COURSE we have read and said and sung texts that are poetic.  But just when the older kids are getting antsy and ready for a big long winter break, my littles--most of whom have never been in a group situation; many of whom arrived expert in Spanish or Amharic or Arabic but are beginners in English--are finally getting the hang of the routine, have learned their classmates' names, know what to expect from school. 

During this initial period my paraeducator and I have worked hard to make the most of our scant time, to make our days predictable for both families and children (while going graciously with the flow, of course).  The concept of "story" is familiar to everyone; the concept of "poem" not so much.  So it's only in the last couple of weeks that I have begun labeling texts as poems, and only last week that I attempted to introduce a text as poem.  It didn't go well because I didn't plan carefully, although the poem I chose was a fine one ("Crayon Poem" by James Carter).  I learned superfast that it made a huge difference not to be in the room with the children to do my patented introduction of what a poem is and how to get ready for it to "work."  It made a big difference that there was nothing graphic to look at on the screen, although I showed them the text.  At this age the poem arrives mostly through the sharer's FACE AND BODY, not through words on a page, no matter how colorful.

So this week, with my AM student Bella's interest in tigers to inspire me (this month we are doing mini student-led studies), I am getting very 2D-concrete and presenting the concept of POEM on our first-ever named POETRY FRIDAY using a POEM which I have composed. (By 1:00 when the PM Class signs onto Zoom I will also have one for Monserrath about unicorns.)  It will follow a shared reading of the Tigers article on PebbleGo.  Here are the inevitable Google Slides.

[Friday afternoon edit: Bella was absent.😆] Now I can use this presentation to add a slide for each Friday's poem (not all by me, certainly, but to get started it helps that I can match my own composition to what I know will be accessible--with just the right amount of stretch--to my actual 4- and 5-year-olds).  And then when I want to, I'll be able to print a booklet for each child to give out at our monthly materials distribution, where we actually get to see the children in person for 5 minutes. (Not gonna lie: I love it and it breaks my heart every month.)

Go here if you want a copy of this template.  Have a concrete Poetry Friday with any young ones you are working to inoculate with the entirely beneficial poetry virus, and a Merry Holiday Tiger to you!

The roundup today is with Buffy Silverman, where she interviews the NCTE Excellence in Poetry for Children Award winner JANET WONG!  I'm proud of my participation in this choice for teachers and students and all poetry lovers.

BONUS VIDEO 😊

ncte poetry notables part 2

Welcome to a warming couple of reviews of poetry collections for the youngest readers, both selected by the NCTE Award for Excellence in Children's Poetry Committee! The whole process of reading through the submissions was a treasure hunt, so I'll start with...

FINDING TREASURE: A Collection of Collections
by Michelle Schaub
illustrated by Carmen Saldana
(Charlesbridge, 2019)

Best for readers K-3, this collection of 18 poems tells the story of one main character, a girl whose teacher has asked the class to share something they collect. But what is her passion?  In her exploration of the collections of her family and friends--everything from buttons to baseball cards, from coins to clocks--our narrator considers what she might love enough to collect, curate and share...and in the final poem she decides:

"My medley isn't common,
nor is it very strange.
It isn't something that you count,
sort, or rearrange."

It's POETRY!  Whether her collection is the very poems in this book, written in her own voice, or a collection of favorite poems from outside this book, is unclear and probably doesn't matter.  Throughout, Schaub's language is effortlessly readable in a variety of free verse and rhyme-and-meter poems. She successfully portrays both the collectors' devotions and the delights of their chosen objects, including SMILES.  There are plenty of these in Saldana's detailed cartoon illustrations, and plenty for readers.


I'M THE BIG ONE NOW: Poems about Growing Up
by Marilyn Singer
illustrated by Jana Christy
(WordSong 2019)

Another collection that hits a sweet spot for ages 4-8, Singer's poems are filled with her characteristic wordplay and celebrate the common but exciting developmental accomplishments of young children.  With titles like "First Good Snap, First Good Whistle" and "Big-Kid Teeth," this book has a poem for all the ordinary leaps that are common to all kids; there are also poems about growing into more specific experiences, like "My Own Seat on the Plane" and "Cannonball."

Yesterday I stood and stared
              at the blue bottom
              of this big pool.
Yesterday, and the day before,
              and the day before that.

But today,
              today.... 

Like a coconut, I drop
             with a smashing splash,
touch my toes to that blue bottom,
             and, in a flash, up I pop. 

The essential business of learning to ride a bike comes in three installments, "Trying to Ride" Parts 1, 2 and 3, likewise highlighting the way that we all learn things bit by bit over time, and effort is usually involved.

Beyond these strengths, this collection is also notable for its variety of companion poems, such as the quiet "In the Theatre" and the noisy "At the Ballpark," its poems for two voices, for its lengthier poems and its brief, triumphant final word on the back cover:

Tying My Shoes

Guess what, you toes!
I have learned to make bows!

******************************************

Now that I have done my due diligence as Poetry Committee Member, these books go to PreK with me TODAY so I can do due diligence as a Poetry Teacher!  Meanwhile you can go to Kat Apel's blog for the second Australian-hosted Poetry Friday roundup of the month--which is just as well because there continues to be good and bad news from that beleaguered continent.

Stay tuned for four more reviews of NCTE Poetry Notables in the next few weeks!

what do kindergarten poets do?

As promised last week, I'm celebrating the (endless end) of National Poetry Month today with poems by 17 kindergarten poets from North Kensington, MD!  After our (year-long) week-long poetry study, the most fun this year was noticing who learned what about poets' techniques--some clearly took in the lesson about creating strong feelings; some chose carefully where their words would go on the page; some used repetition (occasionally by accident!) and some went for juicy words or juicy rhythm.  Once again, I consider it my greatest success as a poetry teacher that all but a couple had good ideas and felt capable of writing a poem.

As the teacher I often get both the first and the last word, but today I'll go first and let Anthony have the last word.  You'll see why. 

Frog Song

tadpole  polliwog

tadpole  polliwog

   (gills   gills)

  back legs   shrinky tail

  front legs   shorty tail

    (change  change)

      

      frogpole   frolliwog

      frogpole   frolliwog

          (lungs   lungs)

                              LEAP!

by Ms. Mordhorst

****************************************

Ameera’s  Mirror

my mirror

was gone at

recess

it was alone

and shiny

by Ameera

Planes and Trains

airplane

train

the airplanes

are flying

the trains

are rolling

by Cristian

A Ballerina Dancing

a girl put on her shoes

blue dress

blue shoes

then the girl performed

then she took a bow

by Charm

Star Wars Legos

black

green

circles and squares

I made the

Death Star

by Thomas

Ice Cream

I love to eat

ice cream and

eat other colors

of ice cream!

oreo!!!

strawberry!!!

vanilla!!!

by Catherine

Space

Space oh space

how I love you

you are 1,001,000

miles away   oh

how you make

my brain tickle

by Jack

     

Maniac

The maniac

gets you and

he steals  money  

he sneaks in your

house      he steals

treasure  he steals

food        he steals all

by Jacob

    The Butterfly

the butterfly

is in the

meadow

finding

nectar!

in the flowers

by Ari

Snake

swiveling snake

shedding its skin

slithering away from

a roadrunner

by Aidan

Fish

fish live in

streams and oceans

too    fish eat

plants and insects

too

by Michelle

Cake

I have a

birthday party

I make a cake

and to have

my cake

come here

I like

my cake and

I like my cake

forever

by Jocelyn

Tiger

tiger eating

zebra

meat

by Edwin

My House

my toys are

behind my chimney

my kitchen

is in order

my room is

organized

my house looks

pretty

by Victor

My Egg Hatched

Look at my

egg    it hatched

there is a chick

this chick is

so cute that

I keep it     oh

wow!

by Hannah

Lions

lions are the

king

of the

jungle

lions are

fierce

by Nadia

Ice Cream

I eat ice cream

at my home and

my brother eats ice cream

in a cone

We like

rainbow

ice

cream.

by Victoria

The Clouds Are Nickels

the first part of it:

nickels are the right size

for a cloud 

the next part of it:

clouds are soft 

clouds are like

rice and mashed potatoes.

I will drink lemonade wow!

I am holding a cloud bank

of nickels  wow!

a lot of nickels outside

by Anthony

 **********************************

When illustrating, Anthony took a nickel out of his pocket and used it for tracing the round fluffy shapes of clouds.  And truly, he knew--or created--the cloud bank image.  So much goodness wow!  Which kindergarten poems are your favorite?

The May Day round-up is with Ellen at Elementary Dear Reader--see you there!

almost

It's Day 73 of kindergarten and in some ways our large paper calendar grid and all the ways we mark it are routine--and yet for many 5-year-olds, time and its rate of passing remain mysterious.  Yesterday Eliana was the Afternoon Leader, whose job it is to write the date, continue the pattern, and add a straw and a penny and a dot on the ten-frame to count the days of school.

I have the holidays matter-of-factly marked on the calendar but am politely declining to engage in any conversations about Santa, etc.  Just as for most of October and Halloween, I keep remarking that it's still a lot of days until Winter Break--it's not "almost Christmas yet in Room 166," and we don't have an elf on the shelf.  But next week we'll start our Gingerbread Man work and I won't be able to hold it off any longer! 

At dismissal as she waited to be picked up, Eli considered the calendar and said, with a question in her voice, "My sister says it's almost Christmas."

Almost

My sister says
it's almost Christmas,
almost, nearly,
close to here.

What is almost?
All those boxes
full and empty--
is it near?

Today is 12.
There's 25.
We have an elf
up on the shelf.

He is watching.
I am waiting--
watching too,
just like the elf.

Almost, nearly,
close to now?
I have to wait,
I know--

but how?

HM 2014
all rights reserved

**************
The roundup today is with my new friend Paul at These Four Corners.  Welcome to the hosting gig, Paul! 

OIK Tuesday: signs of fall

 

Today the Mighty Minnows went out for a very short walk, to notice some signs of fall--you know, the regular ordinary things that tell us that the new season is arriving:  changing leaves, acorns, reddening berries. As we stood under an oak tree at the edge of the parking lot, noticing that all the leaves were still green but that acorns were crunching under our feet, I kept up my teacher refrain:

"Leaves turning red is a sign; acorns on the ground are a sign; berries on this bush are a sign..."

 

In great excitement Hector interrupted,"I see a sign too!"  I turned to look at Hector's sign of fall and found him pointing to

After 25 years there are still things I should anticipate--and forget to.

********************************

Seeing the Signs

I saw an orange leaf
I felt a cool wind
I held a smooth acorn
and felt its bumpy cap

I saw a red berry
I felt the chilly dawn
I held catalpa pods
and heard them rattle-tap

I saw a metal pole
I felt its cold holes
I tried to read this sign
but I'm only five--I can't.

...yet.

****************************
Go read more poetry signs at Writing the World for Kids with Laura the Prolific.

in January it's so nice

We now resume our regularly scheduled programming...Happy New Year, everyone!

Update from Room 166: 
On January 2 I repeated a most successful lightbulb idea from last year.  Having read a number of books by Leo Lionni, we enjoyed Tillie and the Wall, in which Tillie, the youngest and most curious mouse living near a seemingly boundless wall, wonders what's on the other side.  After several tries, she hits on the idea of digging under it.  She tunnels along and emerges on the other side to find not the fantastical plants and animals she imagined, but regular mice just like herself.  All the same they're delighted to meet her and there is celebration with flags and confetti and a party. 

We talked about the old year and the new year, and how the new year is new but very much the same as the old--and then we "tunneled" under all the tables from 2013 to 2014,  cheering and greeting each other as we emerged on the not-so-different other side.  It's always delightful to celebrate.

On January 6 I opened up my raggedy, yellowed, dogeared big book of Chicken Soup with Rice for the 25th time and took yet another class of children on a foolish and fanciful trip around the year.  Of course we have to sing it, and just in case there is anyone who does not know Carole King's Really Rosie (a scripted, animated and most importantly scored conglomeration of Maurice Sendak's Nutshell Library), here is the video we've been watching and moving to on all these days of indoor recess.  Most satisfactory kindergarten poetry, don't you agree?

 

 

I tell you once, I tell you twice,

all seasons of the year are nice

for eating chicken soup

eating chicken soup

eating chicken soup with rice!

(chicken soup, chicken soup with ri-ice)

 

Update from my own personal Writer's Workshop:

With critical help from members of the Poets' Garage (especially Liz Steinglass) and the generous Laura Shovan, I have finally completed a WIP that has been underway for more than five years!  It's a good feeling to have that done, and it was a great luxury to spend hours and hours pulling it together, especially those spent in Seaford, England at The Well Cottage.

 

No, this is not a gorgeous, charming and comfortable B&B offering writers' retreats--but it could be.  It's the new home of my mother-in-law and her partner, and they hosted us for Christmas AND provided poet support services that you couldn't pay enough for elsewhere.  I'm very grateful.

 

Please slip and slide on over to Mainely Write with Donna for this week's Poetry Friday round-up.



9.10.11.

9. Breaking Through the Word Wall

We

We look
We like

We like apple!
We like cat We like dog We like eagle

You like this fish.
You like this lion.

I like
suddenly getting how this whole
writing-reading-talking thing actually works


10. Elemental Trace Analysis

icky sticky gooey glue
green grass green leaves
rain water mashed peas
playdough paint
pencil shavings
pumpkin vines
squishy brains
mucky gunky sticky mud
ooey gooey green gum

that's what oobleck's made of


11.  Standards-Based Grading

I am P for Proficient--
independent and efficient

I am I for In Progress--
I can get it, more or less

I am N for Not Yet--
more time to let my jello set

HM 2013 draft

MyPoPerDayMo 2013

Most reading this will have heard of NaNoWriMo, which is short for National Novel Writing Month. It takes place every November, and I'm thinking about it this year because my 9th grade daughter, who went off to high school and promptly joined both newspaper staff and creative writing club (*fist pump YES*), has announced that she will be writing 50,000 words this month. This is something like 1600 words a day, for a final novel similar in length to The Great Gatsby or Slaughterhouse Five.

Although Daisy allowed me to participate in plotting her novel (for which she has a pretty cool concept), there's no way I could commit to that goal myself. I have, however, twice attempted to write one poem per day for the month of November--once mostly successfully and once not at all. For many of you poetry bloggers, a poem a day is no big thing--you do it all the time as a matter of habit. But for me it requires a lot of discipline, and since my teaching life at the moment requires even more discipline, and since fundamentally I'm not a very self-disciplined person, committing to try for one PoPerDay for a month is a big deal.

I'm going to go in, inspired by Laura Shovan's novel-in-verse project, with the plan of writing all the poems from inside a classroom, which might just coincidentally be mine. I also might cheat by reusing poems I've already written since the start of the year. And if my undisciplined mind suddently writes a completely unrelated poem, I'll allow it and worry about connecting it or cutting it later. I'm pretty sure MyPoPerDayMo will be an unlovely rag of a thing, but it will be 30 poems instead of 5 or 6, and that's always worth doing, right?

****************************************

The Other Kind of Toast

My mask hurt my nose.
The parade was long.
Back in the class the table was longer!
Plates with cupcakes, cookies, grapes!
But we couldn't eat yet--hands in laps.
The teacher made us toast.

"To the Fearless Frogs!" we all said.
We bumped our cups--GENTly, GENTly--
we didn't spill a drop.
"Cheers!" we said, and then we drank.
Then Angel said, "To Halloween!"
And Jashawn said, "To loose teeth!"
Camilo said, "To Ms. Friedrich's Class!"
"Salud!" "Chin-chin!" and "Prost!"
And then we got to eat.

HM Nov 2013 draft
*Fearless Frogs doesn't come close to Mighty Minnows, but it's best I can do for now/ Also please see Frederick by Leo Lionni.

OIK: academic vocabulary

Outside, during our daily 5-minute run-around:

Me:  "Look up and notice the clouds.  First they were over there and now they're over on this side of the sky.  How do you think that happened?"

Julee:  "Maybe the clouds collaborated together to travel through the sky."

***********************
wind and
clouds
collaborate
circulate

wind and
clouds
accumulate
elaborate

nimbly swim
across the sky

clouds
somnambulate

OIK Tuesday

 

Keeping it together in Room 166 is a big job these days.  Good work is getting done somehow, despite trials and tantrums, but there's not much left of me at the end of the day and what's Overheard in Kindergarten doesn't tend to be very poetic, especially out of my exasperated mouth.

However, there have been a couple of gems out of other mouths, including one from a Concepts of Print assessment that I conducted with a supersharp Level 1 ESOL student.  Please pardon my terrible Spanish, but I was trying to help him show everything he knew and that required me to be (as ma belle-mere once said of my French) "colorful and communicative."

************
Tell me, Elmer
from El Salvador,
Tell me:  What is this?

"Puntito!" Yes, it is!
It's a period in English,
but don't stop there--
Que dice el puntito?
Tu no sabes?  Never mind.

Y aqui, este marco,
what is this?  Conoces tu?
...A comma makes us pause,
ellipsis while you think...

Elmer, por favor,
what is this cutlass blade
atop a dot?

Eyes wide, sidelong glance,
leaning in, whispered breath--
                                             "Misterio!"
You earn yourself
an exclamation mark.

~Heidi Mordhorst 2013
   draft

*************************
I so wish I could show you a 3-second video of his face when he whispered, "Misterio!"  The drama was gripping.  Go get gripped by more poetry (no doubt including some punctuation) with Dori today over at Dori Reads.

And now, rather belatedly, I need to thank somebunny once again for tagging me last week to do the Children's Poetry Blog Hop with Mortimer...if you didn't get there, please visit Laura Shovan's post and Janet Fagal's, and look forward to seeing Joy Acey's Mortimer Minute this week! Here's how it works:

 

1) Make up three questions you've always wanted to be asked in an interview about children's poetry and then answer them on your own blog (suggestion: use one question posted by the person who invited you to the Hop).

2) Invite one, two, or three other poetry bloggers to join the Hop. Children's poetry is preferred, but all poetry lovers are welcome.

3) In your post, list the names of the bloggers you invited and give the dates when they'll be posting for the Poetry Blog Hop.

 

Mortimer says, "Time for bed," and he's right....