Monday, October 15, 2012

Bird Watching - Watching & Wondering

Robin Nest at Heart Rock Farm
Photo by Hope, Georgia or Henry (Not Sure!)


 
Click the arrow to hear me read this poem to you.

Students - Do you ever just sit and watch the world from a quiet place outside or through your window?  I am always amazed at what I see and wonder and think when I slow down my mind.  Today's poem is a poem about watching and wondering.  It is a lovely thing to quiet oneself enough to see what thoughts come to your mind, to see what you wonder, to be quiet and awed and amazed and in love with this beautiful and mysterious world.

You may notice a little bit of movement in the line breaks of this one, a little bit of flitting.  Why?  Well, I decided to play with the movement of words especially in the lines where the birds are moving.  Why not make the words move around too?

Today's poem is especially for Jennifer Wright and her students in rural Texas as they continue falling in love with birds.  I highly recommend that everybody visit Jennifer's beautiful and inspiring blog, Teaching Simplicity, to read about how she and her students are writing from poems and field journaling together.

If you are thinking about such a bird study yourself, you will enjoy both Bill Michalek's post and Mark Baldwin's post over at Sharing Our Notebooks.  These two naturalists generously explain how their notebooks bring them to a deeper understanding of nature.

And now, I would like to welcome Meghan from Mrs. Luft's second grade class at Taylor Elementary in Spencerport, NY.  Meghan sees so many deer in her back yard and that one day she was watching the deer and a blue bird landed on her head.  She said it was so beautiful, pretty enough for kings and queens, and she wrote this lovely poem to keep her memory alive.

Blue Bird, Blue Bird

Blue Bird, Blue Bird
Sing your song to me.
Let me hear the melody.
The melody of the song from
The kings and the queens.
Sing the song to me.
The song of the melody.
The melody of the song.
The kings and queens are waiting
to hear the...melody.

The song of the Bluebird...
"Ring the bells.
Ring the bells for me.
Ring, ring, ring."
Now you're heard
The song of the Blue Bird.

by Meghan

Thank you, Meghan, for sharing your magical and musical poem with us!  What fun that poets from New York to Texas are thinking about birds right now... 

This week, I welcome illustrator Nina Crittenden to Sharing Our Notebooks. Nina shares some fabulous notebook peeks along with her inspiring words, and you will have a chance to be entered into her generous drawing of a book and pocket notebook.

Please share a comment below if you wish.
To find a poem by topic, click here. To find a poem by technique, click here.
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5 comments:

  1. I'll send this on to a classroom at school who studied birds all last year! They will love it, Amy! And, I just looked at Jennifer's blog-beautiful to hear about! Thanks for all your ideas.

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  2. Hello! I have now blogged about my card with your glitterpoem and linked back to your blogg.
    http://niinasdesign.blogspot.se/2012/10/glittrig-inspiration-i-tavlingen.html

    Thank you for your generosity!

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  3. We loved this poem! We talked about movement and ways to write about the way birds move without using boring words. The new phrase in my class is, "magical poem-y words". And that comes from you, Amy! Thank you for this fun bird poem!

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  4. Meghan, I like use of repetition in the poem. You're writing about "royal blue" birds, aren't you!

    I'm jealous, I've lived in New Hampshire for 36 years and I've only seen ONE bluebird here!

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  5. Dear Mrs. VanDerwater,
    We noticed movement with words in one of our reading group books called Chloe the Chameleon. The page said:
    She fell
    down,
    down,
    down,
    through the rainbow.
    and we made a connection to the poem Bird Watching from your blog where you used movement of the poem lyrics.
    Thank you for sharing that skill with us!
    Mrs. Luft and Savannah,Jeffrey, Arriyanna, Alyssa, and Ronan

    ReplyDelete