My Kindergarten poets are excited to share their first poem that hatched this year with the world! It was a fun adventure, combining our love of poetry with developing research skills and addressing science content knowledge.
The poem we were studying this week was Amy Ludwig VanDerwater’s Every Day Birds. In Kindergarten we love our poems short and sweet so we are able to memorize them or read them ourselves. For our study we focused in on just the first stanza.
Blue jays are one of our every day birds in Room 1. Many of them visit the feeder outside our classroom window and they are certainly loud and bold!
We wanted to learn more about Blue jays, other than the fact that they are loud, blue, and a bit intimidating to smaller birds that also like to visit us. We did a bit of research on PebbleGo, one of our favorite kid-friendly databases that our school subscribes to.
First we came up with a list of body parts or key identifying features. Next we added words explaining their role or importance to Blue jays.
Here’s where the poetry midwifery, as Amy herself once referred to it in a conversation, comes into play. The teachers pointed out a pattern that they noticed — identification, movement, eating. We proposed a few line swaps, and…
TAH DAH! Kindergarten poetry magic. As you can imagine, our poets are proud as, well, Blue jays! They are looking forward to illustrating their personal copies of the poem which will go into their poetry folders. They can’t believe their work will be sitting right next to Amy’s!
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So much to love with these young poets. I will be starting with mine soon.
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What a delightful post. Love seeing the process of working with the students. Hooray for the Room 1 poets!
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Tada! Fantastic. Loved this sneaky peeking into the wondrous Wyman’s Wonders. The final rearrange of lines was perfect. Now I’m imagining the flock of blue jays your classroom will create.
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PS Back again. Have you seen Molly’s blue jay? Methinks Wyman’s Wonders would enjoy it! https://mbhmaine.wordpress.com/2017/10/06/barbers-revenge
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Headed there now, Kat. Thanks!
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Hooray for Kindergarten poets and the magic of shared writing!
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What a beautiful post about all the word and nature love going on in your classroom! Blue jays are such interesting birds. Did you know that they gather and stash enormous quantities of acorns and are thus credited with helping to spread oak forests after the glaciers? Fascinating! I also wrote about a blue jay this week–but from a much different perspective!
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They are busy collectors, for sure. My young ornithologists were traumatized that they also steal eggs from other bird nests, though. 😦 I can’t wait to see what you wrote about jays.
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I love it! These kids are learning at a high level! Great vocabulary and complex thought. Hooray for kindergarten poetry. I have to share this.
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Thanks for stopping by, Linda! 🙂
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I was right there with you in class, Christie! We have lots of bluejays around here (actually ours are Stellar’s Jays–a relative, but not quite the same). After reading your research and the resultant poem, I will look at them with renewed respect.
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Thanks, Violet. I’m looking forward to learning about Stellar’s Jays!
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Yea for your kindergartners and blue jays! Their verbs rock in this poem.
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Thanks, Kay! Verb power!
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I love seeing that develop.
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Wow, what inspiring kindergarteners you have, and how fortunate they are to have you as their teacher, Bravo on this beautiful Blue Jay poem! Hope to see some of their artwork to. Thanks for sharing all Christie!
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Thanks for your kind words, Michelle. I’ll share a few on Friday!
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Hooray for the Kinder Poets. I am thrilled that they are creating with you as their guide!
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