A first grade teacher

During the last two weeks, my kiddos have been writing lots of poetry.  I think that poetry is something that they are naturally drawn to and pretty easy to write.

We've read lots of children's poetry-- including my favorite Shel Silverstein.  My kids can't seem to get enough of him this year!

I started out teaching this unit by reading "Writing Dino-mite Poems" in the Learn to Write series.  This is a great tool for teaching writing.  There is a teaching book with printables and a read-aloud book for each type of writing.  You don't have to purchase the whole set.  Individual books are sold at my local parent teacher store.  

I've found that it's easiest to have structured poems for the kids to practice with each day.  I bind these in a little book to take home.  Click here to download a copy of my poetry book.  Many of these poems were inspired from the Dino-mite Poetry book.  Others were found online.

I hate that I let my kids take home their books without taking pictures first.  I'll do my best to describe each poem with an example.

Animal Riddle Poem- inspired by "Shanna's Animal Riddles"

1st Line- one sentence describing animal

2nd Line- another sentence describing animal

3rd Line- It rhymes with ___

4th Line- sound or action word, repeated three times

5th Line- It is a (name of animal)

*Make sure children pick animals that have rhyming words!

How Do I Know?

Students should pick a time of day, a season, a month, or holiday to write about

Simile Poem

Students can pick any object to write about.

Spring Is...

First Line- Color or colors to describe something "springy"

Second Line- Name of object

Third Line- a phrase starting with -ing

Fourth Line- Any thought pertaining to topic

A few other sping ideas (bumblebees, flowers, butterflies, basketball, baseball, grass, sandals, dresses)

I Can

On each line, the children will tell something they can do like an animal

The Book of Poems also includes an acrostic and a free verse poem.

How do you teach poetry?  I would love some new poems to try next year!

New stuff

New stuff released today!!!!

This week has been pretty unproductive as far as work goes, but the girls and I have sure had fun!

Modi Vs. Singh at Patel museum function

The Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza Egypt will be the largest Museum in the world of Egyptian artifacts. The construction of the museum is almost as impressive as the construction of the Pyramids themselves.
Backed by over 3,500 years of civilization and a fledging culture that sprouted and flourished along the Nile River, Egypt has rarely spared any opportunity to preserve its historical monuments and artifacts.
Evidence of it is amply borne out by the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) project, billed is one of the largest museum developments currently underway globally.
With an allocated area of 480,000 square metres, the museum will be located nearly 2 kilometres away from the Giza pyramids adjacent to the Giza plateau, and on completion will become the intersection between modern and ancient Cairo directing the public back to the ancient heritage of Egypt.
The facility will offer an exhibition area of 35,000 square metres and house 100,000 artefacts.
The project construction consists of the following main elements: Museum and Conference Center (Main Building); the Menkaurus Retaining Wall and other retaining structures; auxiliary buildings including restaurants; car and coach parking; exhibition works and an extensive external works package.
The items to be displayed will be organized into chronological galleries spanning the ages of Pharaonic history including: Pre-History; Old Kingdom; Middle Kingdom; New Kingdom; and Late and Roman Period. Besides, there will also be two special areas for display, including theGrand Staircase and the Tutankhamun Gallery.
The museum has been designed by a team that consists of Heneghan Peng (architects); Ove Arup (structural engineer) and Buro Happold (mechanical engineer).Their scope of works included pre-schematic design, schematic design, detailed design, tender documents and construction drawings.
The genesis of the museum goes back to 1992 when a Presidential Decree was issued to allocate nearly 50 hectares at the current site location in Giza for the facility.
What followed was a flurry of activities with more than 1,550 conceptual architectural designs from 83 different countries being submitted by international architects and firms. The most distinguished was the winning design selected by the International Union of Architects in Paris on 2 June 2003.