Monday, November 20, 2006

First graders and poetry

MS. BELL (me): So our word for this week is poetry. Who has heard the word poetry before? [Half of first graders raise hands.]
What IS poetry? It's ok if you don't know. Who thinks they might know what poetry is?...

BELL (first grader): Well, poetry is kind of like a love note. It's just... all mixed up with love. Kind of.


Nobody could follow that. All of the boys wrinkled their noses. Cynthia said something about rhyming words. I totally lost all of them.

("It's ok guys--ADULTS have a hard time with this question.")

I told them that poetry is playing with words to tell how you feel. And then they started calling out their feelings :). Which was awesome. And then I told them to think about how they would feel if they were the table. Which made them giggle a lot.

MS. BELL: Ok, raise your hand if you really don't understand what I am talking about at all. [More than half raise hands.] Mostly I felt like an idiot :). But I'm glad that we ended with giggling so that they will still maybe agree to talk about this tomorrow.

Because last week Talon (that is a girl's name) said, "I guess we're just bored without popcorn."

3 comments:

ben said...

i bet you're the best teacher. my first grade teacher was a shrew. mrs. wilson, no joke. i feel robbed.

ms. bell, would you please teach me first grade again?

elsie said...

This made me smile so much--thanks, Ben. But all of the 1st grade teachers at Central are pretty cool, and I still have a lot to learn. Yesterday I was yelling. Today was really good. I will post some poems in a while.

cristina's butterflycakepan said...

i want to be in your class too!

i just learned to knit, sewn, and draw if first grade.