Celebration and Centos

Happy Celebration Saturday. Ruth Ayres is gathering celebration posts over at her blog, Discover. Play. Build.

First I want to shout out and celebrate fellow poet-blogger, Laura Shovan. For her birthday month, Laura posted Pantone colors as writing prompts. As a prize for my participation, she sent me a package of prompts, colors and postcards. What a great gift! Thanks, Laura.

Sometimes you try a poetry activity and think it didn’t go so well, but then the kids ask for it again. So when C came up, my students asked to do Book Spine Centos. I said, “OK, but you have to spend some time and try to make them have a theme, not just see who can stack up the most books.” Making a well composed cento poem is harder than it looks.

So with a little collaboration and an ever-growing classroom library, my students went to work. While some were perusing the shelves, Vannisa quietly went to the side and lifted the title, “Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry,” and wrote a couplet poem.

by Margaret Simon
A thousand mornings
view from the window seat
blackbird singing
state of wonder

By Nigel
Once upon a marigold,
The Twits
wake up missing
side by side.

By Kendall
Roll of thunder, hear my cry
day by day.
A jar of dreams
choosing up sides
worth
things not seen–
eye of the storm.

If you like this idea, step on over to 100 Scope Notes with Travis Jonker and view his 2014 gallery.

Today, I celebrate a week of poetry writing and reading in my classroom. Poetry makes everything better, even storms.

The thunder is very loud,
rain falls from the cloud.

Perfect nonsense is what I say,
I like this rainy thundering day

Roll of thunder, hear my cry,
don’t be so loud, I hear you nearby.

Give me back the blue sky,
or else everyone will be on standby.

The lightning flashes bright,
making the sky turn black and white.

The thunder stops as my teacher reads the poem,
the peacefulness makes me feel at home.

Vannisa, age 10, all rights reserved

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