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Summer isn't done quite yet, and what a great way to celebrate these last days of summer magic! The wonderful word wizard Rebecca Colby, author of It's Raining Bats & Frogs,  shares a magical writing exercise for your students. While it’s geared towards Grade 1 students, it could be adapted for older children.


Magic Rhyming Spells


Delia’s spells in It’s Raining Bats & Frogs are written in rhyme. Share some of the following spells with your students. Ask them to identify the words that rhyme.


· Hubble, bubble, toil and trouble.

· Hocus pocus, magic crocus.


Students will create rhyming spells of their own by filling in the blanks below.


· Zero, one, two, I’ll wave my wand at ______________.

· One, two, three, turn into a ____________.

· Eight nine, ten, turn into a _____________.



Working in pairs, students will create rhyming spells using the following starting lines. Ask students to create rhymes that are not used in the book. Extension activity: Students can create spells on their own without benefit of starting lines.


· Stir the brew in the vat, . . .

· Eye of newt, tongue of snake, . . .

· Wave your wand over the box, . . .

· One more wave, here I go, . . .


Now it’s your turn!

I challenge each one of you visiting the blog today to create your own magic spell. If you do, feel free to post it in the comments below. I’d love to read your results!





More Summer Fun! Join Rebecca as she celebrates  It’s Raining Bats and Frogs! Who doesn’t love a scavenger hunt! Follow Rebecca’s tour to collect the clues. There will be eight answers to find and submit in total to the link below.

 You can enter the overall giveaway for a $50 USD Amazon voucher (or £30 GBP Amazon voucher) at the end of the tour. Submit your answers here!

So what should you be looking for? Witch names, of course! Each post will mention a fictitious witch somewhere in the discussion. To be in with a chance of winning, leave a comment on the blog where you found the name (but please DON’T reveal the name) , including here at Teacher Authors! At the end of the tour, send Rebecca (at website address above) a list of all eight names via her website contact page, and enter the Rafflecopter entry form on her page. You have until 11.59pm EST on 5 September to enter the scavenger hunt giveaway!
“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.”   ~ Roald Dahl

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I hope you've been enjoying our sharing of some of our favorite poems. I've really loved hearing my fellow Teaching Authors read!

I could never choose one favorite poem, but this is definitely one I come back to again and again. It has several elements I adore: rhyme, nature, the ocean, gorgeous language, a melancholy but still comforting tone, and content that acknowledges the dangers in the world but promises safety anyway.

Seal Lullaby

Oh! Hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us,
  And black are the waters that sparkled so green.
The moon, o’er the combers, looks downward to find us,
  At rest in the hollows that rustle between.

Where billow meets billow, then soft be thy pillow,
  Oh weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease!
The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee,
  Asleep in the arms of the slow swinging seas.

—Rudyard Kipling

And here I am reading the poem:



I hope you're having a terrific National Poetry Month! There's so much amazing stuff being shared in our kidlitosphere--it's hard to keep up, isn't it? I do hope you'll take a couple of minutes to go to our Blogiversary Post and enter our giveaway. You could win one of five book bundles from one of the Teaching Authors:>)

Artist/writer/blogger/poet and all-around lovely person Robyn Hood Black has the Poetry Friday Roundup today at Life on the Deckle Edge. Have fun!

[posted by Laura Purdie Salas]

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Hip (to the 5^th power) Hooray!
It’s our Blogiversary!!!!!
Our TeachingAuthors group blog has been teaching authors since April of 2009!


It’s also our Blogi-VERSE-ary, so smartly re-named by our reader Mary Lee of A Year of Reading, because we six TeachingAuthors chose to celebrate the occasion by reciting our favorite poem in honor of Poetry Month.



To plan a (highly-recommended) visit, click here.
Teachers can learn all about Poetry Out Loud in the classroom by clicking here.
So you’re never without a poem nearby, click here to download the Poetry App.




“Po-em is a two-syllable word, child!” she shouted. “How many times must I tell you all that?!  Now raise your head, start again and this time, for goodness sake, speak the words correctly!”
Ironically, when I was first trying my hand at writing for children, I wrote a poem entitled “P-O-E-M is a Two-syllable Word.” In time the title became a line in the first poem I ever sold, to Ebony Jr. magazine.  I’ve searched high-and-low for my copy so I might share the poem, but alas, no luck.  Even today, I can’t speak the word “poem” without enunciating clearly its two two-letter syllables.


He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head.
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,
And he sometimes goes so little that there’s none of him at all.

And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
He stays so close behind me, he’s a coward you can see;
I’d think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!

I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

[Note: If you're receiving this post via email, here's the link to the Sound Cloud reading of Robert Louis Stevenson's My Shadow by Esther Hershenhorn ]


             * * * * * * * *
I offer at least five bundles of thanks to you, our readers, for embracing our blog, and to my fellow TeachingAuthors too – Jill Esbaum, JoAnn Early Macken, Carmela Martino, Laura Purdie Salas, April Halprin Wayland and currently in absentia but always in my heart, Mary Ann Rodman and Jeanne Marie Grunwell Ford, for embracing me.

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We Teaching Authors are celebrating National Poetry Month by posting recordings of us reading some of own favorite poems.

Today is my turn--lucky me! I spent a few days at a writing retreat with Teaching Authors Jill Esbaum and April Halprin Wayland, who generously helped me try something I've wanted to do for a long time: read a poem in rounds.

Here's our recording of Mary Ann Hoberman's "Counting-Out Rhyme" from The Llama Who Had No Pajama.

What fun! Thank you, Jill and April!

If you're reading this post via email, you can view the video on YouTube.


Poetry Friday
Today's Poetry Friday Roundup is at Today's Little Ditty. Enjoy!

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A HUGE thank you to Mary Lee, who blogs at A Year of Reading, for coining the word "blogiVERSEary" when she commented on April's post announcing our celebration and giveaway.

BlogiVERSEary is the perfect word to describe our theme this year. (Wish I'd thought of it when I created our Fifth Blogiversary logo!) Since our blog's anniversary falls during National Poetry Month, we thought it would be fitting for each of us to share a favorite poem, à la this year's Chicago Poetry Foundation's edition of the Favorite Poem Project. Esther is the one who brought the Favorite Poem Project to our attention, so I'll let her talk more about it when she posts. Meanwhile, if you're a teacher or parent, you may want to go ahead and check out their poetry lesson plans and other resources (after you're finished reading here, of course!).

To make our blogiVERSEary posts extra special, some (perhaps all) of the TeachingAuthors will share their favorite poems not only in printed form, but also via an audio or video reading. It's an opportunity for those of you we've never met to at least hear our voices. Creating an online audio or video clip is new territory for me. Unfortunately, I don't have a video camera, so I'll be sharing an audio reading, as April did.

I created a new account with SoundCloud, just for that purpose, per these instructions from the Poetry Foundation. After a couple of tense days when I couldn't get my account validated, I was finally able to upload the sound clip. If you are reading this post via email, you can go online to listen to the clip here. If you missed hearing April's reading of her favorite, give a listen to her Friday post. And while you're there, be sure to enter our blogiversary giveaway to win one of our FIVE "blogiversary book bundles," if you haven't already done so.

It took me some time to decide on just which "favorite poem" I wanted to share. The first poems I thought of were classics by Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson. But I really wanted to share something a bit more child-friendly. So I went over to check out Greg Pincus's annual 30 Poets/30 Days project. Poking around on the site, I discovered the perfect poem for our blogiVERSEary: "How to Read a Poem Aloud." It happens to be written by our very own April Halprin Wayland! Greg originally posted it in his 2009 edition of 30 Poets/30 Days, on April 28, 2009, just days after our TeachingAuthors blog debuted. And now, with April's permission, I'm sharing it here, as one of my favorite poems. You can also hear me read it below.

            How to Read a Poem Aloud
                    by April Halprin Wayland

            First, read the title of the poem
            and the poet’s name.

            Be clear.

            Now completely
            disappear.

            Let each line
            shine.

            Then read it
            one more time.

            When the poem
            ends, sigh.

            Think about the poet at her desk,
            late at night, picking up her pen to write--

            and why.
                             © April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved. 


Now isn't that just the perfect poem for our blogiVERSEary?




Happy Poetry Month, and Happy Writing!
Carmela  

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.
Howdy Campers ~  Happy Poetry Month!  Happy Poetry Friday!  And...

Happy 5th Blogiversary to us!

On April 22, 2009, powered by the dazzlingly bright solar power of Carmela Martino, we started this blog.

Five years--what a fabulous ride it's been!

Five candles.  And when there are candles, someone makes a wish and blows them out. So you could say that this image represents the six active TeachingAuthors. (We're celebrating all TeachingAuthors who have been part of our blog biography.)

Campers, thank you from the bottom of our candles for reading, following, commenting and encouraging us. You're why we do this. You're why I'm terrified everytime a post is due. We want to add something meaningful and merry to the party! In celebration of You, this month's drawing is for one of FIVE "blogiversary book bundles." Each bundle is a set of five books hand-selected by a TeachingAuthor and contains at least one autographed TA book. Yay You! (Details below.)

This month, inspired by the Chicago Favorite Poem Project, each of us will share a favorite poem. One of mine is "Liberty" by Janet Wong, from her book, The Declaration of Interdependence--Poems for an Election Year and also included in Caroline Kennedy's Poems to Learn by Heart) read (and reproduced below) with Janet's kind permission:



LIBERTY
by Janet Wong from DECLARATION OF INTERDEPENDENCE – Poems for an Election Year

I pledge acceptance
of the views
so different,
that make us America

To listen, to look,
to think, and to learn

One people
sharing the earth
responsible
for liberty
and justice
for all.

Wow, right?  So much substance packed into 12 lines.

This month is overflowing with poetry!  Three TeachingAuthors are celebrating in three ways:

• Laura is writing riddle-me haiku;
• I'm in love with metaphors, so I'm having a metaphoraffair this month;
• JoAnn will be posting poetry-themed Wednesday Writing Workouts here, while on her own blog she's adding more poetry writing tips and assorted poetry treats, including giveaways of Write a Poem Step by Step.

Also, Sylvia Vardell's Texas Women University students chose poems from the The Poetry Friday Anthology for Science: Poems for the School Year Integrating Science, Reading, and Language Arts and have made "poem movies" of them.  They'll appear on Sylvia's blog all this month. My poem "Old Water" will be featured on April 6.


--You have a chance to win one of FIVE "blogiversary book bundles." Each bundle is a set of five books hand-selected by a TeachingAuthor and contains at least one autographed TA book.

--Books will be mailed directly to the winner, so winners must have a US mailing address.

--You have 3 entry options, and can enter via 1, 2, or all 3 options to increase their chances. (We DO verify that you've met all the criteria for each option. Incomplete entries will be disqualified.)

1) Tell us how you follow the blog (by "follow" we mean some sort of automated subscription service, such as via email, Facebook, Bloglovin', etc.) We have links in the sidebar to make it easy to start subscribing if you haven't already.

2) Leave a comment on THIS blog post. If you have difficulty commenting, you can submit comments via email to teachingauthors [at] gmail [dot] com. For this giveaway, you need to include in the comment either a) the title of a favorite poem OR b) the title of a favorite TeachingAuthor blog post.

Please be also sure to include your name in the comment so we can verify you've fulfilled this option. [Some folks don't comment with their real name and we have no way of knowing who they are!]

3) Help spread the word. Share a link back to this blog post from your own blog, or from Twitter, Pinterest, or any other way we can verify online. You must include the URL of the link in the space provided.

And good luck!
a Rafflecopter giveaway

posted with love by April Halprin Wayland.  Monkey's on vacation.

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