new posts in all blogs
Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: 2nd graders, Most Recent at Top [Help]
Results 1 - 8 of 8
How to use this Page
You are viewing the most recent posts tagged with the words: 2nd graders in the JacketFlap blog reader. What is a tag? Think of a tag as a keyword or category label. Tags can both help you find posts on JacketFlap.com as well as provide an easy way for you to "remember" and classify posts for later recall. Try adding a tag yourself by clicking "Add a tag" below a post's header. Scroll down through the list of Recent Posts in the left column and click on a post title that sounds interesting. You can view all posts from a specific blog by clicking the Blog name in the right column, or you can click a 'More Posts from this Blog' link in any individual post.
 |
| our school has a really big rock out in front |
"Letter by letter, the bigger the better--
Great big words!"
--Michael Mark & Tom Chapin And so a new school year begins, with a change from the tiniest full-timers at the school--the kindergarteners--to the not-very-much-bigger second-graders. Looking back now at my consternation* over this change, I realize that I believed that 7-year-olds would be simultaneously* less innocent and more challenging* than 5-year-olds, less imaginative* and more conservative* than 5-year-olds, less new and sparkly and more ordinary*.
I must have had rocks in my head. Second grade
rocks, especially in the first week of school! They do not consider themselves too grown-up to enjoy the same greetings and singing games as the 5's, but when you say "Please line up," they already know how to do it. They were thrilled to climb all over the big rock, but they were able to stop climbing and thoughtfully describe it. And they are
very into vocabulary* and learning
great big words as well as different words for the same thing. Just yesterday we compared
vomit, puke, barf and
throw up in our discussion of the very few things that might interrupt our work on Independent Reading Stamina. (We reached 10 minutes by Thursday, without nausea* or emesis.*) Perhaps "Magic Pebbles" would not be a wrong class name after all...thesey are small and shiny and smooth and powerful, just like
Sylvester's Magic Pebble.
You'll understand why the following might be the first Poetry Friday poem for our Poetry Anthologies. I found it in
The Walker Book of Poetry for Children.
Flint | Christina Rossetti
An emerald is as green as grass,
A ruby red as blood;
A sapphire shines as blue as heaven;
A flint lies in the mud.
A diamond is a brilliant stone,
To catch the world's desire;
An opal holds a fiery spark;
But a flint holds fire.
The round-up today is with
Linda Baie at TeacherDance, one of the several Poetry Friday participants who generously contributed to my
DonorsChoose project. I'm thrilled and grateful to say that my request for 4 Kindle Fire HD tablets, intended for allowing kids to enjoy the ever-growing array of online read-aloud sites and apps, was fully funded in less than a week! However, it's not too late to help, Any additional donations will come to my classroom in the form of gift cards that I can use to purchase headphones and cases for the tablets. Long live crowd-funding, and thanks!
Welcome
Add your name to the birthday chart.
Look--on Wednesdays we have Art.
Choose three books for your reading box.
Let's all get ready 'cause Second Grade Rocks!
Not my very best little ditty, but it conveys the message: I am no longer a kindergarten teacher. I loved kindergarten and I'm sorry to leave it...but now that it's real and the room is set up (just about) I'm getting excited about 2nd grade. The one thing I'm really grieving is that first-day-of-school
Swimmy-Makes-us-Mighty-Minnows tradition. I have some of the same kids I taught, and they are bigger and more grown up. I don't think they want to be Minnows any more.
So, I'm starting the year with
Sylvester and the Magic Pebble instead, because we have some rocks-and-soil science in the first few weeks to connect to, and we'll also be reading and working with
Roxaboxen and
If You Find a Rock, books I adore. But I haven't figured out yet what we will become as a group. "Magic Pebbles" doesn't capture the characteristics I want to emphasize, and "Mighty Magnets" is a bit of a stretch....I'm hoping it will come to me over the weekend, but if you have any suggestions, PoFolks, I'd welcome them.
The round-up today is hosted by Sylvester I mean Sylvia Vardel at
Poetry For Children--enjoy the welcome there too, from Sylvia and my geographic neighbor Linda Kulp!
Welcome all visitors, new and seasoned! I'm looking forward to rounding up your poetry posts throughout the day, and I'm delighted also to share poems by 2nd graders from Mr. Gamard's class at Wyngate Elementary School here in Bethesda.
On Wednesday I spent 75 minutes sharing "Honeysuckle Hunting" and talking about how poetry tools like alliteration, personification and onomatopoeia are powerful--but how they work best in a poem about something that really matters to the poet. The children then drafted, with very little hesitation. There was "Can I?" and "Are we supposed to?" -- to which I always answer, "You are the boss of your poem."
On Thursday my aim was to highlight the freedom poets can exercise in arranging their poems on the page to help readers read it "right." I brought in "Botanical Jazz" printed across four left-justified lines (contrary to its appearance in the book), and after reading it aloud twice, I asked the children to cut and paste the words of the poem on lines, creating line breaks and stanzas. This turned out to be both challenging and highly instructive, and the kids enjoyed investigating the different readings commanded by their varying versions and comparing their own with each others' and with mine. More on this exercise next week....
Then they went back to work with their drafts, to reconsider arrangements on the page, word choice and pacing--or just to elaborate their illustrations. They were rather excited to think of their work being published on the World-Wide Web, and so without further ado (Okay, a little further ado: as always, I'm not able to preserve all the indents, so apologies to young writers who intended a little more variety in the shape of their poems)....THE POEMS!
Mouse
by Peter D.
Creeping crawling sneaking. Stealing
cheese.
Living in dark holes.
Always staying out of sight.
Always sneaking food at night.
Jumping out of sight when the
cat comes.
Brown, black, gray, white mice!
What am I eating?
by Danielle P.
The reds are
like SHINY red apples.
The oranges are
like JUICY tangerines.
The yellows are
like SOUR lemons.
The greens are
like
SWEET
lime.
The
purples
are
like BITTER grapes.
now I’m
eating SKITTLES!!!!!!
Drawing
by Cooper M.
Action!
I take pencil and draw a circle.
Then a straight line down the bottom of the
circle. Then one line going to the right.
Then I draw one line
going diagonal and…
wow! You’ve got a troop. But make more!
The Night Is Like A Cat
by Kit F.
The night is like a big black cat
the moon is like his eye
with a gleaming glow of mischief sailing
across the sky.
The night is like a prowling cat
watching all the stars
which are like the mice
that make their home in ours.
Now you know that
the night is like a cat.
football
by Ryan G.
Hike
whoosh
the football flies through the air
click clank
the players crash together
he catches the ball
TOUCH DOWN!!!
BOOM!
he kicked the field goal everyone is out of
their seats
It’s good!
the Redskins win!<
Poetry Friday here tomorrow and feeling summery at 90 degrees...
Many delights await, since I had an opportunity to do some poetry work with my son's second grade class this week; virtual permission slips are rolling in, which will allow me to share some of their really individual, skilled and charming work.
I'll collect the breakfast links around 8 am (or, if I can persuade Mister Linky, he'll do it), be back for a late lunch around 2 pm, pop off for a job interview and come back for nightcaps after 9. See you tomorrow!
*from "Botanical Jazz,"
Pumpkin Butterfly, 2009
I have taught sizeable classes of 2nd graders, more than once, and I don't remember it being as challenging as parenting a single 2nd-grade boy. I have carefully avoided teaching a class of 6th graders, or any group of kids older than 11--once they grow underarm hair my sense of control erodes quickly--so I was not prepared for the joy of parenting a single 6th-grade girl.
We have on our fridge a set of children's poetry magnets which usually say things like "did we eat green and blue monkey dog cheese?" (The set does not include punctuation, so the question mark there is my addition.) That 6th-grade girl, who lives daily in her sense that things are changing, that childhood fleets away, left the following on the fridge this week. Up high.
ask mom
by dmmg, age 11
will she shine
are books alive
is this good
where is my home
do flowers sing in water
are sundowns too fast
Yes, daughter, they are...and poems speak your soul.
And now, by way of contrast: the 2nd-grader, my little early bird, has just come downstairs. Apropos of nothing immediate, but apropos of our recent 1960's live-action Batman viewing (the campy series featuring Bruce Wayne and his youthful ward Dick Grayson), he asks,
"Who names their child after a penis?!"
The poetry roundup this week is with Elaine at Wild Rose Reader...see you there, and don't forget to read my "extra" post this week featuring some really good news.
What's your favorite season? It's an important question; in my family we seem to review our preferences, with revisions, on a regular basis (just like we keep having to come back to the food question: "If you could have only one carbohydrate for the rest of your life, what would you choose? only one fruit? only one vegetable?").
I find it very easy indeed to pick summer, but this early fall time is a close second because of piquant overlaps like the one I tried to capture in the opening poem of last year's Pumpkin Butterfly (Boyds Mills/Wordsong). My school is full of painted lady and monarch butterflies because of the second-grade science curriculum, and the pumpkins are already on their way in, all under the mellow October sunshine. Don't forget to watch for ghosts.
Ghosts
we haul our wagon to a patch of hilly earth
weighed down with deep orange
with bigbellied, cumbersome pumpkins
“This is the one”
“And this one”
we say
we cut the tough vines and turn to load them up
behind our backs
a gust of butterflies rises and tumbles
on hot October air
yellowgreen tinged with orange
wings as weightless and angular
as the pumpkins are heavy and round:
the ghosts of our pumpkins untethered from earth
This is rather a good little poem and is even more fun as a song--and it's certainly the right way to begin [ahem-TWO!] new reading classes full of children with first names from Farhan to Manuel, from Dayrin to Bronx, from Fumiya to Jaisa.
How nostalgic it made us, singing it blearily before dawn with my freshly-minted middle-schooler, for the days of nursery school and Dragon Tales...
The Hello Song from PBS "Dragon Tales"
Get up on your feet
And to everyone you meet
Say hello, hello, hello, hello
When you meet somebody new
The first thing you should do
Is say hello, hello, hello, hello
Say it high
Say it low
Say it fast
Say it slow
Get up on your feet
And to everyone you meet
Say hello, hello, hello, hello
Cause when you wanna make a new friend
Give a great big smile
And say "Hi, hello, my name is
[Zak! Wheezie! Ord! Cassie!]"
And before you know it
You'll have a brand new pal
True-blue, till the end
A brand new friend, say it again
Say it high
Say it low
Say it fast
Say it slow
Get up on your feet
And to everyone you meet
Say hello, hello, hello, hello
Say it high
Say it low
Say it fast
Say it slow
Get up on your feet
And to everyone you meet
Say hello, hello, hello, hello
Hellllllo!
Check out all the goodies at the Poetry Friday round-up, hosted today at
Susan Writes by (funnily enough) Susan!
Those of us who thrive in the classroom environment have now been out of school long enough to be thinking of "next year." (Actually we were probably scheming about how do everything Better, Stronger, Slower before school was over, or that might just be me.)
So I woke up this morning (too early; bad cat!) thinking about the sense (or not) in a class mission statement, which led to a picture of me and my new reading class of 2nd graders making our silent and stealthy way ("Your mission, should you choose to accept it...") through the halls of our new school building, occupying and exploring our new room, and in the background was playing the theme from Mission Impossible (click to get the effect), which only works if you participated in Pallotta TeamWorks AIDS rides of the 90's, the motto for which was (and here finally is today's poem, a brilliant one-word piece of punctuation genius)--
I'mpossible.
I think my second-graders just became the I-Team. Poetry Friday is at Irene's Live. Love. Explore! blog today.
"You are the boss of your poem."
What a wonderful statement to help empower young poets and help them set free the poetry butterflies they hold inside!
I'm doing a weekly series of artist poetraits
(poem portraits) over at The BALD EGO Blog.
This week's artist is Mary Cassatt.
Your students are the bosses of very imaginative, surprising, and fun poems, Heidi! Thanks for sharing them with us.
I've got genetic poetry today:
http://tabathayeatts.blogspot.com/2011/05/chemical-ghosts.html
Hi Heidi; It's Friday night here in Japan but because of the time difference, I might just be the first one to leave my link for Poetry Friday! Here's my link for my PaperTigers poetry post: http://www.papertigers.org/wordpress/poetry-friday-postcard-from-japan/
Happy last friday of May! I've got some prose poetry by Annie Dillard (selections from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek) and thoughts on the end of the school year.
http://readingyear.blogspot.com/2011/05/poetry-friday-annie-dillard.html
I'll come back and read the student poetry tomorrow, I promise!
"You are the boss of your poem!" I'm going to save those words for next year. I loved reading the second graders' poems- such a variety of topics and voices! kids jump into poetry in ways that never ceases to amaze me! Thanks for sharing them. This is our last day of school and I'm in with a terrific beginning of summer poem.
Heidi, the 75 minutes you spent preparing your students are the best part of this post, because their writing is so free, so simple and elegant. Skittles and Drawing and the part of the Night poem where "anything can happen here" -- Hannah speaks my thoughts about your method of teaching poetry.
Today I share one of my Wind Voices poems at The Writer's Armchair. Thanks for hosting today.
What a wonderful collection of poems. It was fun seeing what matters to them: monkeys, ice cream, football, Skittles!
Today I'm serving up Jorge Argueta's Rice Pudding, two bowls, two languages:
http://jamarattigan.livejournal.com/544197.html
Thanks for hosting today, Heidi. Enjoy the weekend. :)
I have some Shakespeare today, here. Thanks for hosting!
Thanks for sharing the kids' work. Who knew second grade could be so productive!
At Random Noodling I have X.J. Kennedy.
Kurious Kitty gets ready for firefly season, and, Kurious K's Kwotes' P.F. quote is by John Fowles. (I think some time soon, I'll have a your boss quote to share!)
today i'm taking a nonsense hop around the hen house
http://fomagrams.wordpress.com/2011/05/27/poetrfriday-hen-house-hop/
favorite live from the 2nd grade poems:
Dogs dogs, Their minds are so
insane.
i may end up thinking that line every time i see dogs running wild from now on.
What a fun group of poems. Thanks for sharing. And I, too, love the statement that "You are the boss of your poem."
I have an end of the school year poem at http://dorireads.blogspot.com/2011/05/i-liked-this-poem-that-came-today-from.html
Thanks for hosting.
Heidi, thanks for sharing these wonderful, wildly imaginative poems! I've been playing with words for chipmunk sounds in my head this week, so Jack M's chipmunks who chirp, chirp, chirp in the forest made me smile. Today I'm "watching the river flow" with Bob Dylan, in honor of his 70th birthday this week:
http://www.robynhoodblack.com/blog.htm?post=792125
Heidi,
Interesting post! I enjoyed reading the children's poems. I loved sharing and writing poetry with my second graders when I was teaching in an elementary school.
*****
At Wild Rose Reader, I have an original fairy tale poem written in the form of a FAX from the Seven Dwarfs to Snow White.
http://wildrosereader.blogspot.com/2011/05/fax-to-snow-white-original-fairy-tale.html
Thanks for hosting, Heidi! Today I'm sharing a poem inspired by my five-year-old daughter and by the excellent book The Word Exchange: Anglo-Saxon Poems in Translation:
http://cracklesofspeech.blogspot.com/2011/05/poem-beachcomber.html
I'm back! At Blue Rose Girls, I have another original fairy tale poem titled "The Evil Queen Speaks to Her Magic Mirror."
http://bluerosegirls.blogspot.com/2011/05/evil-queen-speaks-to-her-magic-mirror.html
Hi, Heidi. I'm sharing student poems today too! My lesson on food poems asks kids to think beyond how a food tastes. It's what a food evokes -- people, places, emotions -- that truly feeds us. My post has a link to a youtube clip of the model poem, Sandra Cisneros' "Good Hot Dogs."
http://authoramok.blogspot.com/2011/05/poetry-friday-what-feeds-us.html
No poetry on my blog this Friday morning, but the kids' poems here are lovely! I love Peter D.'s cheese stealing mouse and Jeanne F's "I said please too many times."
"You are the boss of your poem" is also great advice, and a lovely way of expressing it!
"You are the boss of your poem" seems like such a tiny thing to say, but it completes the circuit so the juice flows and the light goes on and shows us what matters.
Thank you for hosting today.
I'm still thinking about allusion--and how it is can render things obscure. I offer a Lost World poem with its provenance of imagery.
http://blythewoolston.blogspot.com/2011/05/baby-lyuba-lost-worlds-for-poetry.html
Thank you for sharing these wonderful poems written by your students. They are filled with amazing energy!
Today I am sharing a poem by Kristine O'Connell George:
http://sheridoyle.blogspot.com/2011/05/poetry-friday-forest-walk.html
Thanks for hosting!
What great advice - You are the boss of your own poem!
At thewritesisters.blogspot.com I'm sharing a poem by William Stafford in honor of Memorial Day.
Thank you for sharing the children's poems...I have already read each one twice, what expression!
And thank you for hosting today. I have shared a snippet from Stephen Sondheim after recently attending another production of a revue I love, Side by Side by Sondheim. http://bit.ly/jDMiLe
I hope all enjoy a restful and reflective Memorial Day weekend.
Those wonderful kids' poems remind me of Rose,Rose, Where Did You Get That Red, a fine book.
My poems on a family under stress are at "Rain: A Dust Bowl Story,"
http://dustbowlpoetry.wordpress.com
Thanks for hosting. Love the children's work.
My selection is "A Child's Introduction to Poetry" written by Michael Driscoll and illustrated by Meredith Hamilton.
Thanks for hosting, Heidi - and for helping prepare our next generation of poets!
Over at The Drift Record I have a couple of riddles, including one of my own.
I lover the second grade poems especially "Action". I am in with first grade poems: http://maclibrary.wordpress.com/2011/05/27/poetry-friday-first-grade-poetry/
What a joyful and enchanting mix of poems! Many congrats and thank you to these young poets. I smiled all of the way through and wished I'd written some of these lines...
I'm in late, though the post was up early. We were in Canada!
Today I have a poem about frog eggs...http://poemfarm.blogspot.com/2011/05/poetry-friday-bursts-with-new-life.html
Thank you for hosting!
A.