poemfarm.amylv.comThe Poem Farm

Pages HOME WEBSITE FIND A POEM POETRY PEEKS COAXING POEMS VIDEOS - 2024 CONTACT Friday, May 3, 2024 Welcome Seely 4th Grade Poets! Seely Place Elementary School Edgemont School District, Scarsdale, NY Photo from Seely Website This Poetry Friday I could not be more thrilled to welcome the wise and talented poets from Mrs. Borella and Mr. Levin’s fourth grade class at Seely Place Elementary in the Edgemont School District in Scarsdale, NY. Welcome, poets! I was lucky enough to visit Seely Place again a couple of weeks ago, but I did not expect the wonderful surprise of reuniting with some of the fourth graders I met two years ago when I visited them as second graders during my first Seely visit. As it happened, last month these same students, now fourth graders, were reading one of my poems in class and writing many of their own. Fortunately for me, they invited me in to their classroom so that I could enjoy some of their poetry and learn about their process. Needless to say, the students are taller, have more teeth, and are both accomplished poets and thoughtful humans. Reunited Two Years Later Photo by Mrs. Borella/Mr. Levin Long before I arrived, these students read the below list poem, one I shared at my blog years ago. And then, Mrs. Borella and Mr. Levin invited them to write It’s ok list poems of their own as a kickoff to the class’s poetry unit. You can follow this teaching process below. Click to Enlarge These final pieces became part of a class book for everyone to enjoy and learn from. I wish that my own younger self had received this kind and thoughtful advice and appreciate it now as an older self. And those precious photographs? Well, Mrs. Borella wrote to the students’ families before the unit and asked - in secret - for each family to send a photo of their child as a little one to serve as inspiration...and to bring joy to the whole project. Read the Pages! One thing that struck me in these poems - besides the most adorable photographs and great advice - is the very true rhyming. You will not find forced rhyme here. Students used all kinds of techniques to find rhymes from listing rhyming words to substituting synonyms to moving words around. They shared some of these strategies with me, and we had a great poet-to-poet conversation about the importance and how-to of keeping our rhyme meaningful. Thank you so much to Mrs. Borella, Mr. Levin, these photo-sharing families the Seely Place community , and Allyson Hickey of booked Authors for connecting me with these writers. Thank you, young poets. I will never forget this visit. Buffy is hosting this week’s Poetry Friday roundup over at Buffy Silverman with a mask poem in the voice of a hognose snake - three acts! Each Friday, a ll are invited to share poems, poem books, poetry ideas, and friendship in this open and welcoming poetry community. If you would like to visit my 2024 National Poetry Month Project - ONE MORE OR LESS LINE CROW - you may do so HERE . Much gratitude to anyone and everyone who commented along the way...it can get lonely in here. I wish you a week of kindness to yourself. If you have a difficult day, I suggest rereading one of these students’ poems. And please do leave them a comment if you would be so kind. xo, Amy Please share a comment below if you wish. Know that your comment will only appear after I approve it. If you are under 13 years old, please only comment with a parent or as part of a group with your teacher. Posted by Amy LV at 12:02 AM 13 comments: Email This BlogThis! Share to Twitter Share to Facebook Share to Pinterest Labels: Edgemont School District , It’s OK , List Poem , Mr. Levin , Mrs. Borella , NY , Scarsdale , Seely Place Elementary School , Teaching Poetry Tuesday, April 30, 2024 ONE MORE OR LESS LINE CROW 30 Happy National Poetry Month! (For new poetry writing videos, see the COAXING POEMS tab above.) Hello Poetry Friends! Welcome to ONE MORE OR LESS LINE CROW. If you visited earlier this month, you may have noticed a change my National Poetry Month project title. For my National Poetry Month Project this year, I had originally planned to study crows and share a new crow poem each day of April with the number lines in each poem corresponding to the date. The plan was to write 1-line poem on April 1...and go all the way up to a 30-line poem on April 30. For a variety of personal and poetic reasons, I have changed the project. The poems have lengthened to 15 lines...and now they have decreased from 15 back down to 1, today...the final day. Below you may read all of this month’s poems: April 1 - High in a Pine April 2 - First Baby Picture April 3 - Nestling Crow Appreciates April 4 - Thirty Days Old April 5 - Young Crow with his Sparkling Blue Eyes April 6 - Free April 7 - To Persevere April 8 - Watch Closely April 9 - September Sight April 10 - Black April 11 - Winter Roost April 12 - All Food is Good April 13 - Know Crow April 14 - A Helper Now April 15 - Family Tree April 16 - The Choice April 17 - Build, Wait, Hope April 18 - Mobbing April 19 - Don’t Doubt It April 20 - Crow Parents April 21 - A Wire is Warm April 22 - Is Crow Frightened? April 23 - Over and Over and Over April 24 - Bathtime April 25 - Crow’s Bank Account April 26 - But Sometimes April 27 - After Another Molt April 28 - Every day every spring April 29 - Legacy And now for today! Thirty Crows, One Line Photo by Amy LV Students - Goodbye, Crow. I will miss you. Thank you for joining me for ONE MORE OR LESS LINE CROW this month. I will keep these poems up for a bit...and then they are likely to disappear as I am considering submitting them as a book with embedded facts. Please come back on Friday for a special treat. I will not be sharing a new poem of mine but am thrilled to share a collection of inspiring new poems written by the thoughtful fourth graders of Mrs. Borella’s class at Seely Place School in the Edgemont School District, Scarsdale, NY. xo Amy ps - If you are interested in learning about any of my previous 13 National Poetry Month projects, you may do so here . Please share a comment below if you wish. Know that your comment will only appear after I approve it. If you are under 13 years old, please only comment with a parent or as part of a group with your teacher. Posted by Amy LV at 12:02 AM 3 comments: Email This BlogThis! Share to Twitter Share to Facebook Share to Pinterest Labels: Audio Recording of Poetry , Crow Poems , national poetry month , National Poetry Month 2024 , Nature Poems , One Line Poem , Writing Ideas Monday, April 29, 2024 ONE MORE OR LESS LINE CROW 29 Happy National Poetry Month! (For new poetry writing videos, see the COAXING POEMS tab above.) Hello Poetry Friends! If you visited earlier this month, you may have noticed a change my National Poetry Month project title. For my National Poetry Month Project this year, I had originally planned to study crows and share a new crow poem each day of April with the number lines in each poem corresponding to the date. The plan was to write 1-line poem on April 1...and go all the way up to a 30-line poem on April 30. For a variety of personal and poetic reasons, I have changed the project. The poems have lengthened to 15 lines...and now they decrease from 15 back down to 1. Hence the new name: ONE MORE OR LESS LINE CROW. To do so, simply: 1. Choose a subject that you would like to stick with for 30 days. You might choose something you know lots about...or like me, you might choose something you will read and learn about throughout April. 3. Write a new poem for each day of April 2024, corresponding the number of lines in your poem to the date. For example, the poem for April 1 will have 1 line. The poem for April 14 will have 14 lines. The poem for April 30 will have 30 lines. OR....invent your own idea! And if you start later in April, just play around however you wish. 4. Teachers and writers, if you wish to share any ONE MORE LINE... subjects or poems, please email them to me or tag me...