how to think...

How to Think/We Need Time To/Be Real creators/Turn unconventional Ideas Into News./Unite Spectacular Cosmic Leaps/dance, fool, enchant/Imagine Disaster and/Survive The World/then Stay That Way

Sometimes I have these days...like today, the last day before spring break...when I decide to make paper airplanes out of my lesson plans and take a little side trip.  April is National Poetry Month, so all of my classes have been working with poetry in one way or another.  My eighth graders have been reading one poem a day, and we've had some wonderful discussions about them--about what they mean and how they're formed and how to read them.  My sixth graders have been playing with language, experimenting with poetic devices, making games out of rhyme and rhythm, and writing simile and metaphor riddles.  We've spent some time looking at the found poetry at Newspaper Blackout, and today I decided we'd make some cut-out poems using old newspapers and magazines.

I thought maybe we'd spend twenty minutes on it.  We spent the whole 80 minute block doing it, and although every student approached the assignment with a different style and level of enthusiasm, almost all of them managed to put together some interesting combinations of words and phrases.  Some of them are amazing!

I spent my own prep time today creating a found poem out of an old TIME magazine, and this week (while we're on break), I'm going to post some of my students' poems on our In the Middle (of a Good Book) blog, which has been languishing since the start of the new quarter, as I'm now lacking a blogging elective class and haven't quite figured out how to organize my bloggers into an extracurricular force of awesomeness.

In the meantime, here's a taste, with two of my favorites, from Abbey and Caleb.  Enjoy!

When you finally/ get me I turn into a/ massive disaster/

 that makes you want to/ Try harder./ Thank you

Live it that way/tough guys enjoy people who kill the/love storys that look/bigger and better/to fix/what's wrong/with/me