Read With Me Cultivating a Literary Community 

“If you know what you are going to write when you are writing a poem, it’s going to be average.

– Derek Walcott

Perhaps the biggest lesson our writers are learning through this poetry unit is to look at the world as a writer – and attack it as such.  We may NOT know what we’re going to write in writers’ workshop that day – unlike the long-term units of  narrative and report writing, during which you write, shape, nurse, and rewrite your piece repeatedly over a course of days or weeks, with poetry, we go where our inspiration takes us.

We should remember this, too, in our nightly quick writes.  It is not at all necessary to begin and end on the same topic in a quick write.  The most important thing is to put your pen (or pencil) to the paper and keep it moving.  Think and write, think and write.  Make it so that your thinking and writing are simultaneous.  Make your hand move as fast as your mind moves.

Share with me a quick write or poem you’ve written recently.  Leave something you’ve written as a comment here.   If it is poetry, use the “Enter” or “Return” key to help you insert line breaks as you have it written in your notebook.

Come, writers, let me read your work.

Recently, the young writers and I took writers’ workshop to the great outdoors.  We spent our work period outside so we could immerse ourselves and our senses in sunshine and breezes, while we mingled with the ants and leaves.

Imagery is when a poet, or author, uses words to help their readers paint a mental picture, or visualize, what they’re reading.  Imagery involves more than just the sense of sight, though.  Good authors use descriptive words and phrases to describe the sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and feelings of the event of place about which they write.

To my writers, please go to your writing notebooks.  Comb through your writing, both from class and home, and search for words and phrases that help your readers visualize.  Please, leave a remark on this post sharing some of the examples of imagery you found in your own writing.

Then, head on over to this site.  There, you will find some fun and useful activities there for you to try that help you recognize, understand and use imagery.

We have REALLY been enjoying sharing The Fabled Fourth Graders of Aesop Elementary School by Candace Fleming.  One of my favorite chapters recently was the poetry contest chapter.  In addition to the usual hilarious details and puns, I LOVED the snippets of poetry!

Have you been wondering at all about the poem that helped win the contest?  Remember that 58 line WHOPPER of  a poem?  Thanks to Miss Turner, the underdog came through to steal the prize!

I did a little research tonight and, not only did I find a copy of the poem for us to share, but I discovered another amazing new tool!

Check this out….