More Poetry Recipes in the Classroom: Add a Dash of Shape Poetry by Andrea Perry

Adding a dash of Shape Poetry is bound to spice up many a classroom project.  Get the point?

Shape poetry is a type of poetry which describes or defines an object (or concept, function or characteristic) and is shaped as the object (concept, etc) being described.  

For example, in math class students can demonstrate their knowledge of geometric shapes (even three dimensional ones!) by constructing a work of art.  They can show what they know.  They can type or write or stencil their words, rhyming or not, and arrange them to explain terminology.  Quadrangles, cylinders, squares, oh my!

 In Social Studies, similar projects can take shape. While studying Egypt, students can display their understanding of the mummification process or afterlife beliefs or even Egyptian gods by constructing a poem in the shape of a sarcophagus, linen strips, a pyramid or other related subject content. In an American History unit, Fort Necessity could necessarily be constructed with beams of words, the evolution of the American flag could be striped with information, or the Boston Tea Party,  steeped with facts.

Out in the solar system, scientists have described planets, galaxies, constellations, meteors, stars, and comets to us.  Students can make a big bang by applying their knowledge of any of these with a shape poem full of facts or descriptions.  The applications in science are seemingly endless - atoms and molecules, seeds and plants, magnets and metals can all take shape as shape poems.

Life does indeed imitate Art.  Get out the construction paper, scissors and glue and have your students start getting plenty of poetic projects "in shape."

Poetry Recipes in the Classroom-Today's Ingredient - "Found Poem" by Andrea Perry

A 'Found Poem' is a treasure.  But where can such a treasure be found?  Here are three ways to create them in your classroom:

'Found Poems' consist of words and phrases taken from existing texts and refashioned into original poetic creations...They often resemble poetry ransom notes.

NOVEL GROUPS:
As part of an English/Language Arts Novel Unit, Found Poems can be created as part of a novel character analysis.  By taking snippets of dialogue from a specific character, students can then begin crafting poems which paint a character picture with words.  Dialogue can be limited to a chapter or cover the entire novel.


In a SOCIAL STUDIES setting, Found Poems can be utilized as dramatic poetic interpretations of historical events as varied as battles, inventions, documents, political figures, or archeological discoveries.  Using textbook or other classroom materials, students can reword and re-explain, presenting their poetic version of the selected topic.

CURRENT EVENTS: 
Current local, national or worldwide news discussions in the classroom can be re-designed into works of art as well. By simply cutting and pasting student-selected parts of newspaper or magazine or newsletter articles, individual student views can be expressed and shared.  For example:

Puffing plumes of

  gray ash

evacuation, cancellation, contamination

 pyroclastic flow

  guttural rumbling

superheated current

sporadic secondary explosions

Puffing plumes of

   gray ash

 collapsing houses, schools, bridges

              Ring of Fire

Puffing plumes of

    gray ash

damaging aircraft, interrupting air travel

Puffing plumes

   not for 42 years

             until now

 Calbuco, Chile

____________________________

I highly recommend using a dash of Found Poetry to spice up your classroom. 

Writing on Wednesday: Why Writing in Bed is Not So Weird After All, or the Odd Writing Habits of a Few Famous Authors

Whether you are standing up, lying down, naked, eating apples, or out in your garden shed as you write, you are apparently in great company.  Many authors have unique writing rituals or habits, or wish we didn't procrastinate so much and actually had writing rituals or habits.  Whatever it takes to get the job done; the proverbial "butt in chair" method that is oft quoted seems to help but a few of us.  Others require some very specific conditions.

Carl Hiaasen likes to face a blank wall, and wears noise-cancelling earmuffs. 
Dan Brown occasionally dons a pair of gravity boots and hangs upside-down from a special frame.
Ruth Krauss kept her manuscripts in the refrigerator.
Agatha Christie ate apples.
Flannery O'Connor preferred vanilla wafers.
Victor Hugo wrote in the nude so he would not be able to leave the house and instructed his valet to hide his clothes.
Roald Dahl composed in the privacy of his garden shed.
James Joyce wrote lying on his stomach in bed with a large blue pencil and wearing a white coat.
Truman Capote also liked to write lying down.
Stephen King is quoted as saying he had a goal of 2000 "adverb-less" words a day.
Lewis Carroll preferred using purple ink.
Joseph Heller arrived at some of his greatest ideas while riding the bus.
Woody Allen was inspired during crowded subway rides.

Some of my fellow writers claim they must be at the local library or sitting in a Starbucks since there are too many distractions at home.  Others keep to a strict daily two or three hour time frame or their required 1000 or 2000 words.  Still others have warm up activities - such as write about the last thing that made you laugh/cry, or do 30 jumping jacks.  Another must wear red flannel pajamas.

So what weird thing do you do?  And does it help?
Maybe we don't have writer's block after all.  Perhaps we are like Harold and all we need is  a purple crayon.

Andrea Perry, November 19, 20114

You can count on the Count for a little Halloween Humor

Happy Halloween!

In the spirit of the season, pun intended, I'd like to share two vampire poems:  One by Kenn Nesbitt, U.S. Children's Poet Laureate, and one by Andrea Perry, resident Route 19 Writers rhymer.  You can count on both of them to produce a toothy grin:)

I think my dad is Dracula.
I know that sounds insane,
but listen for a moment and
allow me to explain.

We don't live in a castle,
and we never sleep in caves.
But, still, there's something weird
about the way my dad behaves.

I never see him go out
in the daytime when it's light.
He sleeps all day till evening,
then he leaves the house at night.

He comes home in the morning
saying, "Man, I'm really dead!"
He kisses us goodnight, and then
by sunrise he's in bed.

My mom heard my suspicion
and she said, "You're not too swift.
Your father's not a vampire.
He just works the graveyard shift."

--Kenn Nesbitt

Count Dracula is getting old

And less bloodthirsty, we are told.

As far from youth as you can be

And so long in the tooth is he,

That we have heard his bark, at night,

Is worse for victims than his bite.

--Andrea Perry                                  

What Happens on the Playground Stays on the Playground by Andrea Perry

Are any of you familiar with Iona and Peter Opie's The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren?
Taken directly from the oral tradition of British schoolchildren, 5000(!) of them during the 1950's, the Opies compiled a unique anthology of children's games, punishments, wishes, beliefs, and regulation.  From 70 varied schools in cities as well as remote rural areas, Iona and Peter worked independently with no grants, no funding, and no publishing advances to provide an amazing view of the "unadulterated" lore of the schoolchild.  This encyclopedic text is exhaustively indexed by general category, contributing schools, geography, and first lines. I have had this book for months and still am only about a quarter of the way through it, delighting in every detail.
The chapters of the book include  Riddles, Topical Rhymes, Nicknames and Epithets, Children's Calendar, Pranks, and Unpopular Children: Jeers and Torments to  name but a few.
Though nursery rhymes pass from mother to child, school rhymes circulate from child to child and are not intended for adult ears.. All of the rhymes were generated by and for children only.  I doubt there is anyone who would read this treasure and not recognize something:

In Pranks:  Bell Ringing
"Me don't know, me can't tell,
 Me press a button and run like hell"

Children's Calendar:  Pancake Day ( Shrove Tuesday)
"Tippety, tippety tin
 Give me a pancake and I will come in
 Tippety tippety toe
 Give me a pancake and I will go"

Nicknames and Epithets:  School Food
"Say what you will,
 school dinners make you ill
 And Shepherd's Pie
 Makes Davy Crockett cry:
 All school din-dins
 come from pigs' bins
    -that's no lie"

 Unpopulare Children: Lament
"Nobody loves me
 everybody hates me,
 Going in the garden to eat worms.
 Big fat juicy ones
  little squiggly, niggly ones
 going in the garden to eat worms."

Skipping Rope Rhynes:
"I like coffee
 I like tea
 I like radio and tv"

"Marilyn Monroe
 Fell in the snow
 Her skirt blew up
 and the boy said, "Oh!"

Though the topics and terminology have changed with the times, there is much here that we all remember.  As a matter of fact, some of the rhymes used for counting-out or skipping are practically identical to rhymes known 130 years ago. 
Even if you are not a hopeless rhymeaholic like I am, you will find something to love in this encyclopedia of childhood.
I will leave you with a favorite tongue twister:

"A woman to her son did utter
  Go, my son, and shut the shutter
  The shutter's shut, the son did utter
  I cannot shut it any shutter."

Submitted by Andrea Perry

Best Writing Advice Ever: Make Mistakes by Andrea Perry

  Do any of these sound familiar?



Write everyday.
 Write what you know.
Write the book you want to read.
 Just start.
Give yourself permission to write badly.
 Cut.
The first 12 years are the worst.
 Never open a book with weather.
If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time - or the tools- to write.
 Marry somebody you love and who thinks you being a writer's a good idea.
All you have to do is start writing, finish writing, and make sure it's good.


I am sure we could all add to this list. But the best advice I've heard in quite a while I read in Neil Gaiman's 2012 Commencement Address at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia:

"...I hope you'll make mistakes. If you're making mistakes, it means you're out there doing something.  And the mistakes in themselves can be useful. I once misspelled Caroline, in a letter, transposing the A and the O, and I thought, " Coraline looks like a real name..."
"And now go, and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes.  Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being there.  Make good art."