Small Wonders & e. e. cummings: Poetry and Mindfulness

The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful.

                                                                                                        -e. e. cummings

It was my father who taught me how to observe the world. After watching him with my nieces and nephew, I'm sure my education began at a very young age, but what I remember most are the forced nature hikes through the state forest behind our house. I say, "forced" because my mom made me go with him. She had some cockamamie idea that getting my nose out of my book so I could get some fresh air might be good for me. 

On our nature hikes, my dad would point out animal scat and tracks. He taught me how to find deer crossings and showed me where the bucks used trees to rub the velvet off their antlers. He taught me to identify trees by their bark and leaves. I learned to always walk away from bear cubs...quickly. 

To be a poet, one must be a close observer of the world. One of my new favorite poetry book discoveries is enormous SMALLNESS A Story of E. E. Cummings by Matthew Burgess. 

• I think of this books as a hybrid text, because it tells the story of how e. e. cummings became a poet, from childhood to adulthood, but it also weaves his poetry into the story. Throughout the book, readers see how cummings learned to observe and experience the world around him. The title especially makes my heart strings zing. As a teacher and poet, I want my students to know that paying attention to the little things in life is often what makes life joyful. It makes us mindful of the present moment.

Activity #1

I've chosen three of Cummings'  poems to share with my students. They just happen to be on the end pages of the book. Reading his poems are like unwrapping a puzzle box. The language play is so much fun, as are his inventive line breaks. One of my favorite things to do is experiment with how we read his poems out loud. We read them as he wrote them, trying to pay attention to the way he has broken up lines and words. Then, I challenge my students to rewrite the poems with their own line breaks. We read them again and discover how powerful line breaks are in poems. With this activity, we're examining Cummings' writer's craft and answering the question: Why did he write it like that?

 Activity #2

Next, we talk about mood and imagery. We reread the poems and highlight images and language that jumps out at us. I curate a collection of visual arts and ask my students to pair the art with the selected poems. 

"Love Flight of a Pink Candy Heart" Florence Stettheimer

They spend a lot of time discussing their choices. The best part of this activity is that my students must think deeply about the poet's language, imagery, and meaning when pairing the poems and artwork. Check out the three paintings below. Which poem (shown above) would you pair them with? Why? I'd love to hear your thinking in the comments!

"Lake George Reflection" Georgia O'Keeffe

"The Pink Peach Tree" Vincent Van Gogh

Activity #3

I´ve been hoarding a collection of Altoids tins. This past fall, I sent out an email to my entire school district asking teachers to save the tins for me. I was rewarded with over 60 tins. Before our covid-19 quarantine, I brought them home and began to find small treasures to place in each tin. My plan was for each student to receive a gift-wrapped tin. Upon opening their tin, they would closely observe the treasure in their tin. Now, I'm uploading photographs into my Google Classroom site. Each student will choose a photograph to use for his/her prewriting and poetry writing exercises. 

The pre-writing routine I'm going to use with my students is called 10X3. It was developed by Project Zero. It helps students look deeply at an object or picture. The cool thing about this routine is that it's generic enough to be used for any type of writing. My students will use it to capture their descriptive writing ideas for a small wonder poem. 

We'll be writing all kinds of poetry in the next few weeks. This is a routine I'll be tapping into. As students develop their poems, we'll be sharing them in our Google Classroom site. If our quarantine goes longer (as I'm anticipating it will), we're going to have a virtual Poetry Slam using Google Meet or Zoom. I'll keep you posted on how that goes!


There's nothing easy about this covid-19 quarantine. The fear is paralyzing.  The schooling and routines that would've grounded our students is gone. I'm trying to help them make a little lemonade from the lemons they've been served. 

I hope the freebies below will help you out with your online teaching efforts. Please take care of yourselves. 

Click the pictures below to access the free Google resources.

You can access the newest episode of the We Teach So Hard podcast by clicking on the graphic to the left. It's all about using poetry in your classroom.  

                                        Finally, be sure to stop by Retta, Deann, and Kathie's blogs. They're chocked full of teaching ideas and resources for more poetry-themed books. You do NOT want to miss out on these posts!        

https://rainbowcitylearning.blogspot.com/2020/03/finding-our-voices-through-poetry.html          

           

 https://socrateslantern.com/2020/03/the-sounds-of-poetry.html

https://www.triedandtrueteachingtools.com/2020/03/why-students-must-experience-poetry.html

Klimt & Katze: A Literacy and Art Project Story

I can remember it like it was yesterday. Instead of teaching the American Revolutionary War with a textbook, Mr. Zabel decided we would settle the matter with a court case. Each of us chose an identity to adopt. I was on the colonist side, and I chose Patrick Henry. We researched the events leading up to the war, worked as a legal team to form a case. We searched for evidence to prove our right to independence. I remember the moment I discovered an article about King George and porphyria. I was on top of the world. Here was evidence that the king could be suffering from hysteria, hallucinations, psychosis and depression. We brought the article to court and won our case for the colonists!

It's the first memory I have of learning coming alive for me. I was in seventh grade. When I think about my two years in his 7th and 8th grade classroom, I remember being a consistently engaged learner. Why? Because we did projects, we had choice, and our learning opportunities often meshed together multiple subjects. 

As teachers, we know that our students learn best when they are able to hook new learning onto what they already know. Mr. Zabel knew this, and so do I. It's why I love multidisciplinary projects so much. When I'm faced with teaching something that feels a bit "dry," I look for unique ways to connect the dots for my students.

I was beginning a unit on nonfiction text and needed to teach text structures. Because I was a student who loved the arts, it's a not-so-secret passion of mine to incorporate it into everything I do in my classroom. I had recently read a book I picked up at a used bookstore about artists and their cats, and it reminded me of a famous photo I had seen of Gustav Klimt with his favorite feline, Katze. That's how it all began. We started by reading a couple of picture books about Klimt. We also read a biography that I wrote about Klimt. We did this to get acquainted with the artist and his art. 

Then we looked at some of his art. We used visible thinking routines called "Color, Shape, Lines" and "10X2." The pieces I chose for our art response activity were "Portrait of Emilie Floge," "The Kiss," "The Tree of Life," and "Portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer." The visible thinking routines help students really dig into a painting. It was interesting to listen in on their discussions as they dissected what they were seeing. They noticed the gold leaf and patterns of symbols right away. They also noticed how the patterns seem to repeat from painting to painting. 

For the next session, we read a series of short nonfiction articles about Gustav's beloved pets, the cat. I wrote each article so that it would model these text structures: Problem-solution, compare-contrast, sequence, description, and cause-effect. We spent a couple of days discussing these articles. Finally, students used what we had studied in our nonfiction unit to identify the text structures of each passage. They proved their claims by using textual evidence. 

We had a blast in the next two phases of the project. Each student chose a cat photograph. Using the photos, we played The Explanation Game in small groups. This thinking routine is a game-like discussion strategy that teaches students how to elaborate. Then students completed two more pre-writing activities about their chosen pictures. 

Finally, we began to write our poems about cats. I taught them how to write a Rictometer poem. This poetry form is like a cross between haiku and cinquain. This format is tons of fun. I modeled writing one for my students: 

The One That Got Away

My snack,

Tender whiskers,

Toes and tails, button eyes, 

He'll squeak and scurry while I play

Mouse hockey with my velvet paws,

Until my claws, unsheathed and sharp, 

Pounce and swat 'til he streaks

Behind the couch.

My snack. 

By Tracy Willis

Our final part of the project was to create a Klimt-inspired cat. Students used cat outlines that I copied for them on cardstock. The only other thing I had to buy was metallic gold Sharpies. I bought enough so that I had one marker for each pair of students. They also used colored pencils, Crayola markers, and black Sharpies. We looked at Klimt's art again before beginning, and I encouraged them to choose one painting as the inspiration for their cats. This part of the project took about two sessions. 

My students voted for this as their favorite project from the whole school year! What I love about it is that I don't lose rigor or student engagement because I implemented the arts and meshed reading, writing and art together in one unit. In fact, my students developed their critical thinking skills and had fun...imagine that!

Art is a line around your thoughts.

                                                          -Gustav Klimt

If you're looking for multidisciplinary projects for your classroom, check these out. These particular projects bring reading, writing, and art together and teach critical thinking skills. Click the images below to learn more!

3 + Ways to Celebrate National Poetry Month

em·u·late

/ˈemyəˌlāt/

verb

1. match or surpass (a person or achievement), typically by imitation.

   
   

   "lesser men trying to emulate his greatness"

   synonyms:

   imitate, copy, reproduce, mimic, mirror, echo, follow, model oneself on, take as a model, take as an example;  match, equal, parallel, be the equal of, be on a par with, be in the same league as, come near to, come close to, approximate;  compete with, contend with, rival, vie with, surpass;  informaltake a leaf out of someone's book

"When we teach our students how to become writers, we want them to first read, then analyze, and finally emulate."

I can't remember who said this. I was sitting in our state's literacy conference listening to four of my teaching heroes speak: Pernille Ripp, Stephanie Harvey, Kelly Gallagher and Penny Kittle. As is often the case with me when I swim in a sea of ideas, I remember the ideas, but can't remember whose ocean I was in at the time. 

Emulate.

What a fabulous word, though. If I could offer any earth shattering tips for writing poetry with students, this word would be at the center of all my efforts. If you want to break out of the "write a haiku...now write a diamonte poem" rut, check out the 3 lesson ideas below.  Let me add that we read and discuss each poem in our reader's workshop block, before  I use them as writing models for my students. That's imperative!  

I love using Carl Sandburg's poem "Telephone Wire" for teaching personification. After we've unpacked our thinking about it, we start to notice how he has structured the poem. I give each student a key. I've collected stray keys for years and keep them on a huge ring in my desk.                                                                       We brainstorm. What features does my key have? Is that hole an eye? Are the jagged edges teeth? Does my key open doors or diaries? Does it lock things? What does it keep secret? What would my key say if it could talk. 

We fill our white board with tons of ideas about the purpose of our keys. Then, we each choose one of those ideas, and brainstorm vocabulary that would be associated with that particular idea. For example, I might choose "diary." Some of the words I associate with diary might be: Glittery, lock, lined pages, secrets, crushes, best friend fights, mad at my mother. Then, I begin to write a poem for my students, making sure that I talk about the structure of Sandburg's poem as I try to craft my own. 

Check out the some of my students' efforts! 

When I teach metaphor, I love to share Langston Hughes' "Mother to Son." We talk about how a staircase can be a metaphor for life. We explore the meaning behind the images. Fourth and fifth grade students can "get" this poem. It also gives us a glimpse at how writers use dialect in their writing. Again, we take note of the structure Hughes uses.                                                                      We brainstorm again. If we were going to offer advice to someone, who would we offer it to and what would that advice be? We create a list of ideas on the white board. One side is who we might write our poems to, and the other side is the advice we would offer. The kids LOVE this lesson. Check out their poems below!

Poetry can be found in the mundane happenings of life. One of my favorite poetry lessons uses "This is Just to Say" by William Carlos Williams. After we discuss it and explore the poem's structure, we think of all the things we'd rather say in a note to someone than in person. Kids come up with the coolest ideas. Check out their list:

1. Why I didn't clean my room.
2. That I broke my dad's hammer.
3. I broke the window with my baseball, accidentally.
4. I cut Barbie's hair off (my sister was really mad).
5. I found my mom's chocolate stash.
6. I tangled my dad's fishing pole in the tree.
7. I broke my mom's vase.
8. I ate the frosting off of one side of the birthday cake.
9. I didn't brush my teeth.

Their guilty confessions are hysterical and a window into their childhoods. I don't have any student examples from this lesson, but you can check out the poem I wrote with them as a model!

I could write and write about using poetry in my classroom (in fact, I have). It truly is one of my life-long passions. Poetry teaches us what it means to be human, and it helps us recognize and empathize with other people's humanity. Try reading an 800 year old haiku by Issa, Basho, or Buson. To me, the thrill is realizing that their realities were not unlike mine today. And that connects us...that connects us all.

This week, our We Teach So Hard podcast episode is all about ideas for National Poetry Month. Stop by an give us a listen. Just click on the picture to access!

We've gathered a wealth of poetry ideas for your classroom. Visit below!

The Poet Inside Us

Beyond the Acrostic

3+ Ways to Celebrate National Poetry Month

Poetry is Song of Our Souls

Poppies & Pantoums: Poetry Comes Alive With Georgia O'Keefe

4 Ways to Foster a Sense of Belonging

The Kindness Poetry Project: 10 Writing Exercises From Poet Andrew Green

Roses Are Red: Using Poetry In Reader's Workshop

Poetry & Descriptive Reading and Writing: A Teacher's Story of How "Fluff" Led to Rigor

Valuing Student Voice to Create a Love of Learning

I sent my neighborhood minions out to gather paying customers for our newly practiced theater production. We had worked all morning in the hot summer sun, and now, clothed in the splendor that was my mother's old bridesmaid gowns and cast-off Halloween costumes, we were ready to perform. The lawn chairs were set up, the sidewalk stage waited, our breezeway was our backstage area. 

You could watch the next award-winning Broadway production for a quarter. Another quarter would get you some Country Time Lemonade while you watched. Afterward, we would sign autographs on the red carpet, my mother's Christmas tablecloth that I had stolen from the bottom of the china cabinet.

Looking back, I think I always had a voice. Whether I was writing plays and directing, crafting poems for our small town newspaper, or mouthing off to my mom and then writing furiously in my diary about her unfairness, I had a voice. I have my childhood report cards to prove it... "Tracy needs to curb her talking."

VOICE. 

As a teacher, one of the surest way to lead my students to love learning is to honor their voices, their thinking, their opinions, and their stories. When I make their voices the center of the learning opportunity, great things happen. 

Every year in March, my students and I hold an election. We review the major mentor texts that we read over the entire school year. We discuss them. We share our opinions about our favorites and our least favorites.  Then, we vote to elect our Book-of-the-Year for room 13. 

My students create a huge mind map about all ten of our mentor texts. They draw arrows to and from text titles to show connections they find between the texts. By doing this, my kiddos are remembering what we've read. They're reengaging with the books. They sit on the floor, surrounding the butcher paper, discussing characters and themes. They begin to find connections between the texts. This delights me, because many of the connections aren't intentional, and yet they can see common threads.

Afterward I ask students to choose one mentor text that they wanted to nominate for our Book-of-the-Year Award. Surprisingly, every book is chosen by at least one student.  They return to their seats to do a flash write about their choices. Because they are invested in sharing their opinions about something they care about, they write their literary essays with zest. They know they have to sell their book choice in order for it to win. 

We study bias in text and discuss how authors use words in certain ways to convince or rile up their readers around a product or cause. My students use these techniques while writing about their book nominations.

After drafting, revising and editing, they practice their nomination speeches at school and home. Finally the red carpet day has arrived. They come to school dressed in their best red carpet attire. Students who don't want to wear their finery to school have photo booth props that they've made. They use these instead. I lay out the plastic red tablecloth I bought at the local dollar store. Each student holds their nominated book, struts down the carpet and stands in front of a podium to give his or her persuasive speech (literary essay) to the class. Afterward we vote, and the winner is declared. My students LOVE this, even my hard-to-motivate student who struggled to finish any writing assignment the entire year. 

When we honor our students' voices, great things happen...every time.

The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw, and build and play, and dance and live as only you can.

                                            -Neil Gaiman 

If you're interested in learning more about this project, click on the picture. 

Be sure to visit these fabulous educators below! There are a wealth of ideas here that are sure to ignite a love of learning in your kiddos!

Spark a Love of Learning with Games  | The Owl Teacher       

Spark a Love of Social Studies  | Tried and True Teaching Tools     

3 Ways to Inspire a Love of Fractions | Mix and Math

Just-Right Reading: I Love Myself! | Reading by Heart

5 Ways to Ignite a Love of Math Problem Solving | Think Grow Giggle          

Absent Work that Students and Teachers Love  | Elementary Inquiry

Loving to Write Informational Texts  | Mikey D Teach

Valuing Student Voice to Create a Love of Learning | Wild Child’s Mossy Oak Musings

Developing Grit: Learning to Love a Challenge | Kerry Tracy

How to Inspire a Love of Geometry  | Love Learning

Love Letters & Brussel Sprouts: Exploring Odes and Point-of-View

You're my funny valentine, sweet comic valentine

You make me smile with my heart

Your looks are laughable, unphotographable

Yet, you're my favorite work of art.

-Rodgers & Hart

Growing up, I never crushed on the cutie patooties or the hottie patotties.  I fell for the guys who could make me laugh hysterically or make me swoon by reciting poetry.  So, it's only natural that as a teacher, the valentine books I love the most incorporate poetry and humor.  That's what led me to Love Letters by Arnold Adoff.  This book is comprised of funny, touching, and yet untraditional love letters written as poems and odes.  The letters are addressed to teachers, classmates, family members, or to"fill-in-your-own-name," which is the perfect poem for those people who have a harem of admirers.  The poems in this book stand independently and could be shared one at a time over the course of a couple of weeks. 

Adoff uses fantastic imagery that any child can relate to,  "I love you more than peanut butter cookies crumble. I  love you more than yellow bees bumble. I also love you more than dark thunder clouds rumble..."  These lines are from the poem entitle "Dear Tall Girl at the Front Table," one of my favorites in the book.

Every year, I share this book with my students.  My fourth and fifth graders love it and "get" the humor in it. I use it to introduce odes and anti-odes. We brainstorm a list of ideas for our own odes, for example: A  pet dog, cat, guinea pig, etc., pepperoni pizza, mom's lasagna, brussel sprouts, broccoli, piano, hockey stick, soccer ball, x-box, play station, Legos, teddy bear, favorite book, favorite book character, etc. 

After we've made our collaborative list, they choose a few of the topics that grab them, and sort them into the categories "things I love," and "things I hate. Once they've done this type of thinking, they zoom in one topic and dig deeper into their feelings about the topic. Here's an example:

Then they explore point-of-view. In Love Letters, the poems are sometimes companion poems that explore different view points. So if I'm writing about brussel sprouts, I write about own point-of-view and how much I loathe them. And then, if the brussel sprouts were to write a letter back to me, what would they say? As a poet, I explore both viewpoints.

Finally, my students begin their rough drafts. We spend about two sessions drafting and revising. I make sure to include a mini-lesson about line breaks, because fourth and fifth grade students still tend to write poetry in paragraph form. We do a lot of reading aloud to ourselves using our whisper phones. By the way, this is AWESOME fluency practice! I teach my kiddos that poetry is actually an art form that is meant to be read aloud. So when they choose to read poetry books or their own poems during independent reading time, I let them go hog wild with whisper phones. 

I should add that I model each pre-writing, drafting and revision step for my students. Here are two examples of poems that I wrote with them in order to model the process:

 Dear Macaroni and Cheese,

I looooove your cheesy goodness.

I am overwhelmed by your

bubbling orangeiness.

I love you more than a dog

loves its bone,

more than a baby

loves its bottle.

Your crispy cracker crumbs,

golden like the summer sun,

send me over the moon.

I will love you forever.

Love,

Your Hungry Fan

(By Ms. Willis)

My students identify comparative statements (simile-like), personification, alliteration, and descriptive language as I write and we discuss.  Then, I model an anti-ode.  You can also see it below:

  

Dear Brussel Sprouts,

I loathe your army-green leafy heads

wrapped tightly on my dinner plate.

No bacon or butter

can disguise your nastiness,

your cruciferous metallic taste.

You look like mutant baby heads.

And on dark and lonely nights,

you hold me hostage

at the supper table,

long after the dishes have been done,

and the kitchen

has been cleaned.

 Signed with disgust,

I'll-eat-any-other-vegetable-other-than-you Girl

After students have published their poems on the special valentine stationery I provide for them, we use an envelope template and make envelopes for our poems. They address the envelopes. They put their published poems in their envelopes, and we display them for everyone to read.

Valentine's Day can be a tricky holiday in upper elementary. Hormones have begun to rage, friendships are precariously navigated, and feeling are easily hurt. This project is one of my students' favorites, year after year. It's funny, creative, and non-threatening (and Common Core aligned)!

To learn more about using it in your own classroom, simply click on the picture.

If you're looking for more upper elementary valentine resources, you might also check these out. Two of them are free!