Poetry

For the past couple of weeks, I have been working with my students on poetry, discussing what makes a piece of writing a poem and what doesn’t, some of the more common features of a poem, and the purpose of poetry. I wanted my students to experience writing poetry, too, and for this I decided to call upon a familiar guest, Dr. Reger.

In addition to being an author, historian, professor, and musician, Dr. Reger is quite the poet. He and I have been discussing this project for several weeks. He came in this morning to talk about poetry. He started by reviewing what the students knew and then shared several different kinds of poems. One of the styles he chose to focus on was the apology poem, which is a style particularly popular within the United States. After sharing a couple of examples, he encouraged the students to write some of their own. Because one of his examples had to do with eating something that belonged to someone else and then not actually being sorry for doing so, it was not that surprising that many of the students composed poems of the same theme.

For the next style, he chose to travel halfway across the globe to Japan, where the haiku poem originated. While our modern interpretation of the haiku is usually the seventeen-syllable, three-line poem, he shared that there are actually many ways to write a haiku. He shared a few and then, again, invited the students to write their own. This time, though, he guided them through the steps of thinking of an image and writing about it, then thinking of another image, and then finishing with a third one. None of the three would be connected normally but, when put together in a haiku, our minds have a wonderful way of putting them all together anyway!

After Dr. Reger left, I asked all of the students to write one more haiku. I told them that I would be putting all of them together for my blog post tonight. Here is what my students created:

Let’s get ready for school
Pop sizzling, fizzing
Ready to go home

Teachers line up for battle
Kids play unaware
School starts at seven

Laughing, funny joke
‘Bout a chicken on the road
Teacher not happy

Multiplication table always right
Multiplication learned, ready for test
Kids working, waiting for lunch

I’m off topic
What happened to earth?
Am I dumb?

Water flows
Children swim
The bell rings

The creeper hisses softly
The zombie moans wearily
I have to go to the bathroom

Books on the shelf
A teacher looks
Something falls

Students snoring loudly
Teacher chuckles softly
Math test tomorrow

Seeds fall
Garden grows
Waterfall

Tree branch falling down
Cold wind blows across a fence
Kids walking dogs

With my friend at Target
Trying on glasses
Eating popcorn and shopping

United States in silver
Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Maine
I can’t wait to get them all

I’m hungry
Do you like cake?
What’s that noise?

Pickles are great
Pickles are cucumbers
Cookies are good

Cookie is eaten
Milk is sipped
Toothbrush brushes

Kids pack up
TVs turn on
Parents kiss kids

I look at my wall
My dog is asleep
Time to get up

This was the first time we have ever done a collaborative writing project like this. I rather enjoy the results! And a huge thank you, again, to my father-in-law for helping out!

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