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Pencil Riddle-ku

Pencil Riddle-ku

Hi, you guys! Since the Kindle edition (you don’t have to have a Kindle to read it, though) of Riddle-ku: Haiku for Very Close Reading, part of my 30 Painless Classroom Poems series, is on sale for 99 cents

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August Invitation Photopoem

Photopoem Summer Splashings Gallery

Have you guys seen what ELA consultant Carol Varsalona does each season at Beyond LiteracyLink? She puts out a call for photopoems, gathers them all up, and then creates a gallery online of everyone’s photopoems! I know she puts a ton of time into each one of these. Her Summer Splashings gallery went live last

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I'm a pencil crop, from Riddle-ku

A Forest Riddle-ku

Hiya, everyone. If you are a subscriber to the blog, you should have received an email notification about this post. My awesome web designer worked with WordPress Support yesterday and got everything straightened out. Thanks! And if you’re not a subscriber but you’d like to be, you can do that in the sidebar to the

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Giant spider by road (sculpture)

The Giant Spider [15 words or less poems]

Wake up your poetry brains with 15 Words or Less (guidelines are here)! Well, I think I’ve used this photo before, but I honestly can’t recall…and if I did, it was several years ago. So, I’m going to use it! This sculpture called Maman, by Louise Bourgeois, makes me think:

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poetryaction for Totally Secret Secret

Who could not love Bob Shea’s Ballet Cat and Sparkles the Pony? In The Totally Secret Secret, you will recognize real kid behavior and the negotiations of friendship. I can’t wait for the next one coming out in 2016. Anyway, I thought about the secrets we keep that we shouldn’t, the ones that reveal our

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poetryaction and bookalikes for Popcorn Astronauts

Popcorn Astronauts is full of zany and delightful poems about food, and it put me in mind of one of my favorite desserts, bomboloni from Biaggi’s. My sister Patty and I always go get it when she comes up to visit from Florida. And we each get our own order. (We don’t even order a

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Eros [15 words or less poems]

Wake up your poetry brains with 15 Words or Less (guidelines here)! Continuing my reliving of this past Father’s Day, we admired the big Eros sculpture outside of the Minneapolis Institute of Art. I could swear I featured a photo of this sculpture years ago, with someone looking out of one of the eyes. But

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poetryaction for Wherever You Go

For Wherever You Go,?I wondered how I would describe my own perfect path. And I wanted to use rhyme, which this book by Pat Zietlow Miller (beautifully illustrated by Eliza Wheeler) does in such a lovely way. I think it would be fun to have students write (but not necessarily in rhyme!) about the qualities

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Classified Haiku [Poetry Friday]

Happy Poetry Friday! Last month, we Poetry Sisters wrote poems in the style of e.e. cummings. Whew! I’m glad that is finished. For July, we decided to do haiku in the vein of classified ads. Two ancient forms–ha!

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