Birds of a Feather #PoetryFriday

Welcome to Poetry Friday, everyone! I am excited and honored to host PF today for the first time. I’m crossing my fingers, eyes, and toes that the link up works!

(Photo: BlurryMe/Shutterstock)

This summer, I’ve been a tad bird obsessed. I’ve always been an ornithophile (it’s a thing!), but this summer I took my love of feathered friends to new heights. In July, I spent a week studying Citizen Science with 50 educators from around the U.S. at Cornell’s renowned Lab of Ornithology in the stunning Sapsucker Woods of Ithaca, NY. The BirdSleuth Educator Retreat was not only one of the best professional development opportunities I’ve explored, but it was personally fulfilling because I got to hang out with birds in their natural habitat and knowledgable bird nerds for a whole week. ‘Nuf said! 

A week or so ago, I threw out a bird-related poem challenge to anyone willing to fly along. Poems can be about a particular bird, birds in general, a dislike or fear of birds, and can be in any form. Like I said at the time, just wing it! Here are two haiku that made their way to me over the last week or so, as I’ve enjoyed time reading, rocking, and observing on my porch. 

And then these friends joined us.

 

Lastly, in a moment of sheer madness I embedded a Padlet of the bird-related poetry I’ve written over the last year or so. To read each poem, just click on the individual image. To go directly to my Padlet, click here.

Now it’s time to grab a bevvy of some sort, curl up, and get ready for some Poetry Friday magic!

Please click my frog friend below to link your Poetry Friday post or to just enjoy what others have to offer this week. Thanks, everyone!

 

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“Some may wonder why,” a golden shovel, and a challenge reminder #PoetryFriday

Happy Poetry Friday, everyone! Molly at Nix the Comfort Zone is our lovely hostess this week. I had the great good fortune to meet Molly IRL, as they say, a couple of weeks ago at Heinemann’s annual teacher tour in Portsmouth, NH. Molly and I have been chatting through comments here on PF, on our Tuesday Slices, and in the TeachWrite Facebook community for some time. It was fun to finally meet face to face, albeit for just a short time…this time!

Molly has been crafting the most gorgeous sonnet for some time now, and it’s finally ready for it’s debut. Don’t miss it! You’ll be swept away by The Solace of the Ocean.

One of my goals for the summer was to try different types of writing (tipping my hat to you, Jennifer Laffin!), including new poetry forms. A golden shovel was on my hit list — taking a line from someone else’s poem and then using each word in that line as the last word of each line of the new poem. But which poem to borrow a line from?

I’ve been talking a lot about notebooks this summer with the goddess of writing notebooks, Michelle Haseltine, the TeachWrite community, and on other social media venues, so notebooks it is! Who better to borrow from then Ralph Fletcher, one of the pied pipers of the students-using-writing-notebooks community. His poem, It’s a Place, was the perfect fit. (Click the link to read his original text.)

So here it is, my first golden shovel, borrowing from Ralph’s first line, “Why am I keeping this notebook.”

Some may wonder why
But its who I am
Whiling away the hours, my pen and I
Words sounds, feelings, oddities, life, stored away for safe keeping
Ready and waiting for a time such as this
To be quarried like gemstones from my notebook

Poetry challenge reminder: I’m hosting Poetry Friday next week, on August 17. I threw a bird-related poem challenge out last week to anyone willing to fly along. Your poem can be about any bird you like, or birds in general. It can be in any form you like. Just wing it! If you are stumped, take a look at all the bird-related wonders on Wonderopolis.org. Choose one and create a “found” poem by highlighting key words, or why not try a “blackout poem,” crossing out/covering up unused words.

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Thanks for visiting and join us for some Poetry Friday fun!

 

 

I Hear You and a bird poem challenge! #PoetryFriday

Happy Poetry Friday, everyone! Mary Lee at A Year of Reading is our hostess this week. She has a blitz poem waiting for you!

The unofficial theme for my summer has turned out to be birds. I had the good fortune to spend 5 days in July at the Bird Sleuth Educator Retreat which takes place at Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s stunning campus in Ithaca’s Sapsucker Woods. Wow…what a gorgeous spot! If you are addicted to their feeder and pond cams, as I am, then you know what I’m talking about.

I’m a novice bird watcher, not a certified bird nerd, but I’m working on it. While there are a number of birds I am able to recognize by sight, I’m completely useless at identifying them by sound when birding or enjoying their chorus from my porch. To help me expand my repertoire, I’ve been studying bird mnemonics (geeky, I know), since I returned. These phonetic interpretations are swimming around in my head and some of them worked their way into a slightly cheeky list with a twist poem.

I hear you.
But who are you?
Caw-caw-caw-caw-koodle-yah; koodle-yah
Po-ta-to-chip
Cheer-up; cheer-a-lee; cheer-ee-o, whinny
Are you laughing at me?
Tit-tit-tit-tit
Chk-a-dee-dee-dee
Jay-jay-jay
Do you want me to go away?
Chiddik; chiddik
Cheer-cheer-cheer-purty-purty-purty-
Hooo-ah hoo-hoo-hoo
But where are you?
Keeeeeeeeer
Conk-a-reeeeeeeee
Cheeva; cheeva; cheeva fer-da; fer-da; fer-da; here; here; here peter-peter-peter-
Who’s Peter?

And now for a challenge: I’m hosting Poetry Friday in two weeks — August 17 — and I’d love to throw a bird-related poem challenge out to anyone willing to fly along. Join me!

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Thanks for visiting and join us for some Poetry Friday fun!

 

 

Cedar Waxwing Sit-In #SOLC18 #PoetryFriday

A little ornithological snow day alliterative humor for this SOLC and Poetry Friday mashup.

I really did have a whole lot of fun watching these masked bandits of the bird world hanging out during the waning hours of our latest nor’easter.

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This post is part of the annual month-long Slice of Life writing challenge organized by Two Writing Teachers. Join us! It’s my second year of Slicing in the challenge. And it’s Poetry Friday, too. Michelle Barnes is hosting over at Today’s Little Ditty. I hope you’ll stop by there as well. If you want to take a peek at the Padlet of writing ideas I’ve created, I’m happy to share. Click here! It grows every day.

 

 

 

Blue Jay: A first poem is born on #PoetryFriday

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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Violet, who is thinking about pumpkins today, is our host today for Poetry Friday. Won’t you join us?