Acrostic Poem

Beautiful butterflies forming

Under a delicate chrysalis

Taking exactly the right amount of

Time to come out and ready themselves with great

Effort to flap their wet wings and prepare to fly.  

Ready set go, they are on their way to

Find golden beads of nectar to feed on in a fanciful garden.

Life will be short but meaningful.  The bright

Youthful colors make this graceful insect fascinating to watch.

What is an I Poem?

After reading the books that are in the I poem form I decided an I poem is a poem that comes from a first person point of view.  The person that is writing the poem steps into the role and writes about their view.  An I poem is very descriptive.  It also contains a lot of emotions.  An I poem gives a lot of information to help the reader understand the past or the future or to help the reader grasp what something looks like.  I poems really help the reader to understand how the object, person, or place are feeling and what they are thinking.

I think that I poems would be a very good type of poetry to teach students about first person perspective.  I think that by reading I poems in the classroom helps the students to understand how these objects are feeling.  It gives students the chance to see writing through someone else’s eyes.

I also enjoyed reading Dr. Frye’s article.  I think it gives a very detailed scaffold for how to teach your students to write an I poem.  I know that poetry is hard to teach and as a teacher you do not just want to throw the students in and not explain anything.  All that would happen from this would be frustration.  I feel that by providing students with the background information they need, and by supplying many examples of the poetry you want them to write, the students will really be able to succeed at putting together their ideas.  Once they have their ideas they can use the scaffolding that has been provided and they can dive right on in, hopefully feeling comfortable about what they are creating.

I Am Poem

Here is my revised I Poem.

i-am-a-butterfly.doc

Haiku Poem

I am not sure if I am on the right track with the Haiku poem but please let me know any feedback you may have. 

The Summer Air

Air blowing gently

throughout the dark summer skies.

Calmness fills the air.

Concrete Poem

Concrete Poem

Here is my completed concrete poem.  Let me know your ideas of what you think.  I added some color to make it more appealing.

My Favorite Poem

One Inch Tall

 If you were only one inch tall, you’d ride a worm to school.
The teardrop of a crying ant would be your swimming pool.
A crumb of cake would be a feast
And last you seven days at least,
A flea would be a frightening beast
If you were one inch tall.

 If you were only one inch tall, you’d walk beneath the door,
And it would take about a month to get down to the store.
A bit of fluff would be your bed,
You’d swing upon a spider’s thread,
And wear a thimble on your head
If you were one inch tall.

You’d surf across the kitchen sink upon a stick of gum.
You couldn’t hug your mama, you’d just have to hug her thumb.
You’d run from people’s feet in fright,
To move a pen would take all night,
(This poem took fourteen years to write–
‘Cause I’m just one inch tall).

Shel Silverstein

I Poems by Kucan

I really enjoyed reading about I poems.  I had never really learned to much about I poems.  I think that I poems would be a great way to introduce a first person perspective to your students.  If a teacher uses I poems in their class I feel that students would really be engaged.  I know that first, like the article said, you would have to give examples, but once they saw how much fun it could be I think they would really get into it.  I really like how I poems evoke emotion and are so descriptive.  When I read the examples it made me feel like I was there with the person who was writing it.  It makes you really think about how the other person might have been feeling when they wrote the poem.

I think that this article gave excellent ways to present how to start writing I poems.  It even gave the ”I am” model that students could plug their ideas into.  I think having models like the “I am” format is good for those students that really need solid examples and that really struggle with coming up with ideas without any help.  I know that when I was in school I always became worried when it was time to write because teachers just kind of threw us into it and I felt like I was left there to fend for myself with no examples or strategies of good ways to write.  I think that by giving examples, making our own examples together as a class, and then even having models to fill in really help students that struggle with writing.  I feel that it really helps to boost their esteem because they don’t feel like they are failing all the time.

 After reading this article I really got excited about writing one of these poems and I have never enjoyed and never thought I would even think about enjoying poetry.  The I poems really give the writer a chance to step into someone else’s life and to visualize what it would have been like for them.  When I was reading this article I really wished that I was teaching an older grade so that I could have my students write I poems.  I have never really wanted to teach above 2nd grade but when activities like this are presented it makes me wish that I could really dive into them with my students and just get them so excited about writing.  I am really looking forward to writing an I poem.

Journal Invitation

Here is my completed Journal Invitation that I made for a kindergarten classroom.  I used the book Bug Safari by Bob Barner.

Journal Instructions

Cover of Journal

Journal Open  

Inside Cover/Rebus 

Ch. 6 Planning

This article really made me think about how important planning is for writing.  I know how important it is but it is something I have never really thought about teaching to students because all I have taught is 1st grade and kindergarten.  This article offered many suggestions for introducing planning in the classroom.  I think that teaching these planning models such as prewriting, inquiry, and strategies would greatly benefit the students in the class not only in elementary school but it would teach them skills that they will use on up into high school, college, and even into the real world.  I really thought the quote on pg. 123 was very interesting.  “students will acquire important knowledge about planning as a result of repeatedly using a prewriting graphic organizer….It is further assumed that students will come to value this knowledge and apply it on their own.”  I thought this quote pretty much sums up how teaching writing has been viewed.  I think with these new programs coming out like Empowering Writers and others, things are starting to change.  I feel that we can’t expect a child to learn just from seeing and hearing it.  I think they need to experience it.  I feel that this article really gives good information on how to let teacher help their students do that in their classrooms.  I was wondering if there is any way to use Writer’s Workshop or parts of it in Kindergarten. Maybe the conferencing?  This article really gave me some interesting information on planning that I had never thought of like having some of the activities they suggested for prewriting.  I always let children watch a film about our theme at the end of the week after we have been studying it and have been trying to write about it.  I never thought about using it to generate ideas for writing.  I do have the class sit down together and come up with ideas of something we could write about dealing with our theme and then we pick an idea together and brainstorm it.  I feel that I am using some of the planning ideas in my room but I want to know how much I should be using since I am in Kindergarten. 

Ch. 10 and Graves Article

Graves Article 

First I am going to start with Graves article Children Can Write Authentically If We Help Them.  This article really helped me to see how wonderful journal writing can be if we really promote it and go about helping our students get started.  I was amazed by the stories Graves gave of journal articles that he has encountered that were written with the help of an enthusiastic and thought provoking teacher.  It really touched my heart to hear how the first two boys wrote about their hunger for “want”.  B.J. wanting to know why he had to choose where he wanted to live, and Sean wanting to know why his dad wouldn’t talk about Vietnam but how if he ever wanted to he would be there to listen.  I knew that writing could be beneficial to children, but I guess I never understood to what extent until now.  I think that if I had written in a journal when my father was sick with cancer and after he died it might have helped me to really get out my emotions and to understand or be able to think through better why this had happened. 

I believe that if a teacher can learn to model for their children the process of thinking out loud and on paper and asking those questions as they write, the students will really start to grasp how to take problems, questions, and ideas, and start to put it on paper even if at the beginning it is a very slow process, it will really help the students to start enjoying journaling.  I thought that this article was very well written and really shows teachers that writing can be done in a different way other than just giving prompts, or topics.  The article shows that students need to learn to write just to write, and to have fun with it!!!

Ch. 10

At the beginning of chapter 10 it talks about motivation and lack thereof.  I agree with what the author is saying about how students might have a negative view of writing (it may be boring, they feel it not related to their life, etc.) and so the student turns their views towards writing as negative.  I also believe that whether a student feels confident in writing affects whether they are willing write.  I know that I was never really praised in highschool about my writing so I always felt negative towards what I had written and I always tried to steer clear of it at all costs.  Since high school I feel that my self confidence has greatly increased due to professors in college that have helped me to understand that I am not as bad as I thought.  I think that your experiences with writing greatly affect how you feel toward writing.

I really like the idea of the literate communities.  I hope that I have a classroom where my students work together with sharing ideas for writing.  I also hope that they feel as though they can read their work and feel comfortable with what they have written.  I think that these communities would really help students learn to use their emotions and ideas to write about.  I think other students might draw inspiration from hearing the other students read them out loud or the student reading someone else’s work to themselves.

I try to use different text types in my classroom.  I allow students to write in a writing center.  They are also allowed to write around the room, words they see on the wall.  Sometimes we write together thinking out loud and coming up with sentences.  After reading the part about how to use different types of text in the classroom I would really like to have them doing more writing in groups maybe with a science experiment we do, a post office like you suggested and they can write letters to their friends and give them out.  We also have a smart board in my room so I am going to try to come up with some good ways to use that in my writing.  If you have any suggestions please let me know.  I am utilizing it for math, calendar time, social studies, but writing is one thing I have still not come up with much stuff for. 

I thought this chapter really helps to explain first why some students steer clear of writing while others enjoy it.  I also thought that it gave great examples of things to use in the classroom and different ways of going about these ways and how they will benefit the most important people in our room, our students.  Very good reading selection!!! I really enjoyed it.