Celebrating National Poetry Month - Pandora's Lunch Box

Poetry is a great example of authentic writing because poetry is meant to be shared. Poems can be used to entertain and may be displayed on classroom walls and halls. They may easily be slipped into a letter to a relative or friend and be given as a gift. Interesting words may even be printed on magnets and hung on refrigerators to inspire family members to create spontaneous lines of poetry.

This month I'm sharing a fun poetry-writing activity based on my new decodable book, The Box. Read my recent post HERE to learn more about the story, my process for creating decodable books, and list poems in general. The Box is on sale for $8.99 for the month of April on Amazon. Watch for the black-and-white chapter book version for older students, Gods and Gifts, coming this summer. It includes the first three books of the series reconfigured as chapters telling the Greek Creation Story.

Now back to Pandora... Imagine that Pandora's Box was a lunch box. What kind of disgusting things might have come out of it? What is something good that might have been left at the bottom? A link to the Free Activity PDF may be found at the bottom of this post.

Directions: Start by brainstorming lists of disgusting foods with your students like moldy meatballs, soggy sandwiches, and squishy squid soup. The PDF includes one blank chart and one that already has a few suggestions. Choose whichever one works best for your students.

You may want to focus on word patterns you are studying in class such as consonant-L-silent e (CLe)  words like maple, waffle, and apple. Speech-language pathologists might have their students choose words that start with the /r/ sound like rice with lice, bologna rigatoni, and rabbit foot stew or /s/ like spicy spinach spam.

1. Help students brainstorm a list of disgusting foods and write them on the graphic organizer in the PDF.

2. Write down one delicious food at the bottom of the graphic organizer.

3. Draw a lunch box, use plain brown lunch sacks, or use the lunchbox graphic in the PDF.

4. Write this phrase at the top of the box or sack - Pandora opened her lunch box and out came disgusting things like...

5. Cut out 3 disgusting foods and glue them underneath.

6. Write this phrase near the bottom - Pandora was about to slam her lunch box shut when a little voice said, "No, don't leave me inside, I'm...

7. Cut out the last delicious food item and glue it at the bottom. 

Here are some examples from the downloadable PDF:

Get the Free Activity PDF HERE. Sign up for my newsletter HERE and receive a free copy of my first decodable book, No Gift for Man. Don't miss any of the fun-filled activities I'm creating for A Year of AWE: Authentic Writing Experiences.

CELEBRATING POETRY MONTH

It's poetry month, my favorite time of year. Spring is in the air, school is almost out, and people everywhere are celebrating in verse. Here is a fresh take on a popular format, the cinquain. A cinquain is a five line poem traditionally written with a syllable structure of 2, 4, 6, 8, 2; however, a popular form with students uses word count instead of syllables as follows: 

Line 1 - one word title (subject of poem)

        2 - two adjectives describing the title

        3 - three word phrase or 3 gerunds

        4 - four words related to the subject

        5 - one word relating back to the title

I used a variety of poetry forms, including the cinquain, in my verse novel, Forget Me Not. I chose the cinquain to create brief character sketches to give the feeling of introducing a cast of characters.

Ally

afraid, alone

hurting, hiding, biding

never can go back

me

Elijah

brave, bold

knowing, helping, showing

he risks it all

friend

 Copyright 2012 Carolee Dean

If you are a teacher, consider having students do a fresh take on the traditional book report by incorporating character sketches written either in this format or the traditional 2, 4, 6, 8, 2 syllable structure of the cinquain. This is an activity that can be fun for all ages. 

If you are a writer, think about using the cinquain to create sketches for your original story characters.

Another poetry form I used in Forget Me Not was the pantoum. It can feel constricting and circular since the beginning of the poem often comes back around again at the end. A pantoum consists of four-line stanzas with the second and fourth lines of one stanza repeating as the first and third lines of the next one. Traditionally, these rhymed in quatrains of a,b,a,b. In many pantoums, the first and third line from verse one repeat in the final stanza.  The poem below from page 221 of Forget Me Not is an example of a pantoum.

In nice straight lines

He sets up pens

He orders life

He schedules plans

He sets up pens

the black, the blue

He schedules plans

For both of us

The black, the blue

Words on the fridge

For both of us

Tell where to go

Words on the fridge

Our whiteboard week

Tell where to go

The clock is king

Our whiteboard week

Filled to the brim

The clock is king

And I comply

Filled to the brim

A tight-run ship

And I comply

But it can sink

A tight-run ship

A neat abode

But it can sink

If there are holes

A neat abode

Is not enough

If there are holes

It fills up fast

It's not enough

He thinks that if

It fills up fast

He'll keep us both

He thinks that if

He orders life

He'll keep us both

in nice straight lines

Copyright 2012 Carolee Dean

The theme of this poem is fairly dark. Ally's father is a tightly wound and highly controlling man. Consider, though, what fun you could have with this poetry form if you had students take turns writing stanzas about a story they had read or perhaps a humorous subject or theme with the requirement that they need to repeat the second and fourth lines of the previous student's stanza as the first and third lines of their own.

While we are on the subject of poetry, consider using verse novels for your next class project. They are great for struggling readers because there is a lot of white space on the page. Also, if you are working on having students understand the main idea of a reading passage, you can focus on a page talk instead of a chapter. A page can be a much more manageable amount of information for many students.

Here are a few of my favorite verse novels:

May B. by Caroline Starr Rose (ages 8-12)

Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate (ages 10 and up)

The Crossover by Kwame Alexander (ages 10 and up)

Girl Coming In for a Landing by April Halprin Wayland (ages 12 and up)

and my own Forget Me Not by Carolee Dean (ages 14 and up)

Last but not least, I was very excited to learn that Bethany Hegedus has a book coming out in August of 2019 about the life of Maya Angelou. That one is definitely going on my "to buy" list. See her post on the Nerdy Book Club page about Rise! From Caged Bird To Poet of the People, Maya Angelou (Lee & Low/ August 6, 2019). Maya's grandson, Colin Johnson, writes about her childhood in the foreword of the book.

Dead Rapper Rap

If your school is like mine, then your primary focus right now is one of two things, either SPRING BREAK or SBA testing. You may not be spending much time talking about stories or poems at the moment, unless it's to explore the types of literary devices that might be found in the SBA, or to practice skills (like skimming and scanning) that are related to the SBA, or to learn how to become a whiz at answering multiple choice questions of the sort that might be found on the SBA.

But don't despair. Something exciting awaits you at the end of SBA.

April is poetry month.

You might not think you have time to explore poetry, and yet poetry offers more literary bang for your buck than just about any other form. Consider the story poems that not only offer a complete plot in one to two pages, but also explore literary devices like metaphor, simile, and personification.

Consider some of these great story poems:

"The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes

"Casey at the Bat" by Ernest Thayer

"The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe

While writing my upcoming verse novel, Forget Me Not (Simon Pulse, October 2012), I took the poetic structure of "The Raven" and wrote a story poem about the rapper, 2Pac, showing up in a class as the substitute teacher. The poem is found below at the end of this post.

  

If you live in the Albuquerque Metro Area, you may interested to know that I will be at Alamosa Books with Caroline Starr Rose, to bring a free workshop to students, teachers, and writers on Saturday, April 14, 2012 at 2pm. Winners of a special poetry contest will be announced at that time. Poems may be submitted to Alamosa until April 10th at 8p.m. The elementary school in the Albuquerque area with the most submissions will win a free author visit by Caroline, and the secondary school with the most submissions will when a free author visit by me.

If you are not in the Albuquerque area, they may still enter to win a cool poster containing the poem by finding at least four of the eight 2Pac song titles hidden in the poem below. If you email a list of the titles to Alamosa, you will automatically be enterred in a drawing. For more information visit Alamosa Books.

  

Here is the poem:

  

DEAD RAPPER RAP by Carolee Dean (from the Paranormal Verse Novel, Forget Me Not- coming October 2012 from Simon Pulse)

Once upon a Friday morning, almost all the class was snoring.

Our teacher left a vocab worksheet for a sub who was a bore.

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

followed by a man's voice rapping, rapping lines I'd heard before.

"I'm Skandalouz," the voice he muttered, rapping at the classroom door.

"Open up, or I'll kick in this door."

Ah, distinctly, I remember, it was a bleak day in September.

Dude told the sub he came to send her to a class on the second floor.

She grabbed her books and packed her bag, running past the man in black.

And then I saw it was 2Pac, standing at the classroom door.

"All eyez on me," yelled the man, standing on the cold tile floor.

"I'm your new sub, Mr. Shakur.

"I'm here to wake you from your dreaming, give your simple lives some meaning."

He smiled at us, his white teeth gleaming, then he pointed at the door.

"If you're thinking about jetting, don't want to get caught here abetting

someone who'll have you forgetting what the h--- this class is for.

If you get out now, I won't detain you, block you, trap you, or restrain your

exit." No one touched the door.

"Ah, I see you've all decided to listen to your uninvited

guest get down. I must confide that I've got a special treat in store.

Forgive me if my words are cryptic. Guess I'm just 2Pacalyptic.

Get off your butts, we're gonna kick it, like you've never kicked before."

And soon he had the whole class rapping and break-dancing on the floor.

Dancing on the classroom floor.

He rolled his sleeves and there I saw it, a tattoo of a black bird on his

arm, and then I heard the haunted whisper of the raven's words:

"Keep ya heads up, no regrets, don't know if heaven's got a ghetto,  

but only God can judge what debt you'll have to pay forevermore.

He don't care if you scream and shout, 'cause big G knows there's no way out.

Once you've crossed the line-you're down, and you won't be getting up no more.

Hope you' re open to suggestion, 'cause there only is one question

left. I'm pretty sure you've guessed it. Heard it many times before."

Ah, distinctly, I remember, it was a bleak day in September,

when I heard the raven whisper    

"What are you willing 2 die 4?"