Sounds Like Poetry

Today's poetry challenge is to write a poem in the style of Shel Silverstein, interspersing onomatopoeia between the words of a sentence. Here's the original:

The Fourth
by Shel Silverstein

Oh
CRASH!
my
BASH!
it's
BANG!
the
ZANG!
Fourth
WHOOSH!
of
BAROOOM!
July
WHEW!

The kids in my class really liked this one, and they wrote some terrific stuff. Here's my version:

My
clickety
students
clack
are so
clickety
busy
clack
writing
clickety
poetry,
clack
it's like
clickety
they've
clack
forgotten
clickety
how
clack
to
clickety
talk!
clack

Will Rhyme for Gum

Yesterday was the big prize day for any of my students who wrote 20+ days in March. I warned them in advance that the prizes were silly and the real reward would be to become a better writer. Even so, their eyes were wide when they saw the array of 30 prizes in the front of the room. Each prize was numbered and each winner got to draw a slip from a jar to see just what treasure he or she had earned.

Some were thrilled and some were disappointed. At the end of the day, a couple of the more coveted prizes were left unclaimed, and I assured everyone, those who had met the challenge last month and those who had not, that they were going back into the bag for April, a new month and a new challenge where everyone, and anyone, could be a winner, if only they would

WRITE!

The Limerick Zone

Day 2 of the poetry challenge involves limericks. These little five liners can be tricky to compose since they have both a set rhyme scheme and meter. My students were pluggers, though, and it didn't hurt that their teacher has an ear for doggerel. Case in point:

Our meeting today was a sham.
Our department is in quite a jam.
They push us their best
to teach to the test,
but that's not the teacher I am.

Year by Year

My students started the second annual poetry challenge today. In support of our 100 Days of Writing and National Poetry Month, a different poetry assignment is revealed to students every morning. The first one is called Hello Haiku! and after a quick look at the form and some examples, (and a review of syllables), each student must write and share three haikus.

When I looked back at the sample haiku I had composed last year at this time, I realized that this persistent of winter of ours demanded a little revision.

2013:
Ask the wind that blows
the pink cherry blossoms when
they will fall to earth.

2014:
Ask the bare branches
that blow in the April wind
when they will blossom.

Be Afraid

If my students are any indication, this April Fool's Day is going to be eventful! Here, in their own words, is a sampling of their schemes and dreams, plots and plans, conniving and contriving:

April also means april fools day!! Which means sugar and salt switching, fake rat on the pillowing, ketchup for blood clinic pass getting (haha i wish) and much more.

This year I'm planning in doing something really sneaky. I might change the clock by an hour, or change something to something else I guess.

TOMORROW IS APRIL FOOLS DAY! My favorite "bring your family together" day of the year! I can already feel my evil-ness coming through.

When I go to bed tonight, I will tell my family to watch their back. April Fools Day will be so much fun.
1. Wake up my mom by shooting her with my nerf gun.
2. Wake up my sister by spraying her with an unknown substance.

Tomorrow is April Fool's day! I'm going to trick my parents and my brother, but not my baby brother and sister. They wouldn't get it. Anyway, our family has a "Prank Week" every year, so I have a document on google docs with all the pranks I use. It's going to be so much fun!

The Frozen Bubble Gum Trick:
Blow a bubble.
Freeze the bubble in the freezer.
Take the bubble out of freezer after 15-20 minutes.
Stick the bubble in your mouth.
Then, tell people you just blew the strongest most unpoppable bubble in the history of the world. This one is my favorite.

The only thing I know I'm going to do is prank someone. Hopefully it will turn out successfully and no one will get hurt

Good plan.

Solving for X

People are sometimes surprised to learn that math was my favorite class in school. While I love the romance of ideas that is the humanities, particularly the artistry of expression in literature, it was always the unequivocal absolute of mathematics that I enjoyed most. Math was easy for me, too, and perhaps that is why I spurned it in favor of what I perceived as more complex. It is for that reason that I understand completely why the vast majority of students turns first to math when it comes to homework. They, too, are drawn to its clear-cut expectations and right or wrong answers.

I always enjoy helping them after school or in TA when they need it. Although teaching strategies have changed, the answers are still the same. And when the daily math challenge is presented on the morning announcements, I can barely contain myself from shouting out the answer. "Come on guys! Math WOW with me!" I exclaimed just the other day, when my homeroom seemed completely indifferent to determining the volume of a cube.

The last couple of weeks I have been tutoring a friend of ours who has gone back to college to finish her degree. She's taking algebra, and the hours we have spent solving and graphing equations have been so much fun that I actually thank her at the end of the session.

Hm. 

For the Best

There was a wait of an hour fifteen minutes at the restaurant where we hoped to have dinner after the movie tonight. We gave them our name and number and headed back outside into the quiet rain to consider our options. Right across the plaza was another place that we had never heard of and they didn't look too crowded at all.

It could have gone either way. The place was more of a tavern, with a huge bar, high wooden booths, lots of basketball-filled flat screens, and some thumping nineties tunes on the sound system. I ordered the usual Saturday night dinner from when I was a kid-- steak, french fries, and salad-- and washed it down with a cold pint of draft beer, and when the first place texted, I replied with a satisfied Thanks anyway.