Some of you know that I’ve had a student writer’s circle in the past. For six years, I ran an enrichment group for third grade students, handpicked by their teachers, to belong to a writer’s circle with me once a week during the school year. It’s been at least four years since I had such…
I am a life long learner. I know this because I still enjoy looking for, obtaining, and synthesizing new information. Then, I like to put the information to use because I know if I do that I will remember it better. When my husband was in medical school, they had a saying. It went something…
It’s April! Happy National Poetry Month! I just read a post by fellow blogger Laura Purdie Salas on equation poems. It seems like a fun, easy introduction to poetry! I hope to try it with some students later this month! But, as per my usual routine, I like to write what I ask my students…
One of the most satisfying, yet challenging, writing lessons I did with my former writer’s circle group was pourquoi tales. These are stories that tell how or why something came to exist. As you might imagine they are difficult to write but fun to read. Even though my students were above benchmark third graders, writing…
For the last few days, I’ve been in a slump. It’s really the first slump I can recall during the pandemic. Mostly, my “slumpiness” revolved around feelings about my own self worth and feeling undervalued. But, today, several things have happened to restore my sense of being valued by others. I realized that I do…
When I used to write poetry with students, I tried to decrease the intimidation they’d inevitably feel about writing poetry by helping them find relatable topics – topics they already knew something about – both as individuals and as part of our group. Color, as I’ve written before, was always both an easy and and…
A while ago, before the vaccines for COVID-19 were approved, I was playing with some alliteration. This is a work in progress, but in absence of other words coming to me today, I will share it for Poetry Friday. I think our world, particularly the United States, is stretched thin right now. It seems everything…
What have I worked on this week? I am a reflective thinker. Perhaps, too much so. I find that sometimes all my thinking stalls my actions and prevents forward movement. I get caught up in questions such as, what should I do now? What would be most productive? Should I stop editing and put those…
Several years ago, when I had writer’s circle, the students tried their hand at writing the several types of poems during our month long unit which ran from mid-February to mid-March. My favorites were the color poems and the haiku. I found poetry, using the forms below, helped the young student (third grade) to learn…
Today, on Poetry Friday, I want to celebrate the poet Jack Prelutsky. I own several of his holiday poem books, gifted to me by my mom who used them for years in her third grade classroom. Subsequently, I used them for years for my third grade writer’s circle. Jack Jack Prelutsky is an American born…