The Stacks Computer Style

Today we went to the computer lab...(computers is my LEAST favorite part of the week!)  Anyway last year, we wrote and created "The Stacks" poetry.  They were fun to read and such an easy way to create a poem.  Today in the lab we typed them.  We brought our bookbags to the lab and had two poetry options: 

1-Use the titles of books in your bag to create a poem.

2-Pick one page in your book and type 8-10 of the words into a poem.

3-Do both...oh you over-achievers!

Loved how they turned out...and reinforced that poetry comes from anywhere!  They also got to practice typing and experience changing font and size.  Jusy in case you want to see the non-computer version from last year, click here.

Happy Thursday!!!

Ode to Barb and a Poetry Slam

My friend Barb designs blogs.  She is amazing a creative and makes html code stuff look like a piece of cake.  Look what she did to my blog-

Now you can click and return to the top or click and pin the pictures!

If your blog needs a makeover or an update, be sure to go visit her @ Ruby Slippers Blog Design

My friend Barb also has a monthly poetry slam @ Grade ONEderful.  My class loves poetry.  Part of our Circle of Friends includes a poem everyday.  One we use at the beginning of the year, is so great for school materials.

Do you have any poetry to share for September?

Happy Friday,

The Stacks

For 30 minutes each day all of our 2nd and 3rd graders go to Reading Round-Up.  For some students this is their intervention time.  Students who have met their reading benchmarks, go to groups working on challenging their reading skills.  During this time, I have the highest group of readers and we did some looking back on our reading lives last week.

Students wrote down their favorite or most memorable five books and turned them into poetry.  Then they used Sharpie to write them on rectangle shaped pieces of paper.  Next we looked at different ways we wanted to organize them...alphabetically...by size...a pattern...by favorite...etc.   They turned out great and has become one of my favorite lessons, this year.  Some of us even used appropriate punctuation :-)

Have a wonderful week,
Happy Sunday,

Noun Charades, a Freebie, and Some Giveaways

We have been working on remembering that a noun is a person, place, or thing.  So what better way than to play charades!  We gave one clue, whether it was a person, place, or thing.  Then acted out the noun. 

Pop Quiz:  Is the Statue of Liberty a place or a thing?  This is the argument discussion we got into today.  If your answer is "thing".  Then what do you categorize Mount Rushmore as????  (Can you tell we remembered some American Symbol info. from last year!?)  For a word work option, I included poetry this week.  Since we are learning about seasons/weather, I used a poem about summer and added some directions to it.  One of them was to find the nouns.  You can download it here.

And I have been entering some fabulous giveaways...you can too, just click the pictures.

And lastly, how do you eat cupcakes?  I always take the bottom off and put in the top...cupcake sandwich.  I teach this to all my students....because it is an important life skill!  Last night as I was catching up on blog reading (still working on catching up with the commenting) I found out that Shelley at 3 Teacher Chicks eats them the same way!  She has a picture of this awesomeness on her blog.

Happy Tuesday,

Surprise Poetry

Wednesday and Thursday of this week, I was out of the classroom working with the Right Brain Initiative.  For the short time between Reading Round Up and PE, I had the guest teacher finish reading the amazing book, Birds of a Feather.  

Then left instructions for students to write or sketch about their favorite page from the book.  If they finished and wanted to try writing their own poem. they could.  We have read poetry and written a bit of scripted/patterned/rule following poetry but free form is not something we have a lot of experience with.  Surprises waited for me, with what they came up with.    So I must share them with all of you!

"Oh frigate your chest is so big you entertain the girls.
And why is your chest so red? 
Puff it up again so I can see if a mate."

This chickadee is a bit obsessed with his study of the frigate!

 "Why are you so colorful?
When I see you, you look like
someone got a bucket and painted you."

 "Why are you so fat?
You have a lot of read and
a mohawk."

 "Your beak so sharp
Your wings so straight
Your eyes so great
Your tail so red."

 "Hey Lorikeet did you
get your feathers died
rainbow colors?"

 "Stomp Stomp
the secretary bird
stomp stomp
watch out."

"When I see you, I say
chicka a dee dee dee
You say chick a dee dee dee dee
Repeat."

"Ninja bird ninja bird
how can you defeat a hawk? 
Ninja bird you are like a shadow."

sorry for the blurry

Where do they come up with this stuff!?
Happy Friday,
 

How Many Art Mediums in One Long Blog Post

Loving that he used his words to make a bird foot.

Today we finished up an art project that incorporated cutting/gluing construction paper, water color drawings, tempera painting, and poetry. My chickadees were so proud of themselves, they really didn't want me to hang them up at school, they just wanted to take them home.


We started with the Darting Bird quilt block.  Read here for more directions.




The Watercolor Square:
We started out at How To Draw..., looking at step by step directions for how to draw birds and practiced on scrap paper.  Then we looked at books for appropriate colors and details.  We drew a rough draft sketch with pencil.  And then got a piece of water color paper and drew our bird again.  After our pencil sketch, we traced our lines with "thin" sharpies.  And finally began water coloring.  I am so thoroughly amazed with their art.  Water Color paper might be magical, kids who normally speed through all things truly took their time and oh my word was I blown away by their drawings!

Then add a solid water color background.  We also tried to label our bird and use our initials, like John James Audobon, in The Boy Who Drew Birds.  (Unlike him, we did NOT through our work in the fire.)

 The Poetry Square:
Have you seen this book?  We were inspired by this page, "If birds made marks with their tail feathers when they flew, think what the sky would look like."  So we found some feathers in the back of the arts cupboard and dipped them into paint. 

Then we wrote a simple poem:  Birds ________, Birds ___________, Birds ___________ Birds!  (thank you Writing Fix for the poetry idea.) The blanks had to be filled with a verb ending in -ing.  And the poem had to written like a bird carrying words through the air.

Birds flying birds fluttering birds hunting Birds!

The only thing I wish is that I would have left a border in between and around the squares....until next year.

Happy Wednesday,