Photo Challenge: Winter Acrostic

January's photo challenge was a winter acrostic. Here's the acrostic:

W - Wrapped in scarves
I - Ice skates
N - New snow
T - Temperatures below -30C
E - Evergreen bokeh
R - Roasting hot dogs

Onoma...What?

Basically, onomatopoeia is used to describe words that look like the sound they are describing.  For instance:

buzz, ratchet, crackle, hoot, creak, flush, whoosh, zip, boom, bang, meow, slurp, gurgle, moo, kiss, oink, meow, click, rustle, cuckoo, slurp, crunch, ring, clang, hiss, ...

Well, you get the idea.

I introduced this concept yesterday during our poetry time (each week I pick a poem from Nancy Atwell's Naming the World which the class reads and discusses a few minutes each day).  The poem "Night Songs" uses onomatopoeia extensively, so I wanted my students to understand how it works and how to use it in their own writing.  The lesson must have resonated with some of my students, for today, as class started, they began sharing other onomatopoetic words they had thought of the previous evening.  They might not be able to pronounce onomatopoeia (I find it difficult!), but my students now understand the concept.

Purpose

there was no excuse.

they should not have been
resting
on the floor of the closet,
ignored,
unused
(though not forgotten).

finally,
i pulled them on,
laced them up,
stepped outside

and my shoes
realized once again
their purpose:

to run.

Poem of the Week: Foul Shot

Foul Shot

With two 60’s stuck on the scoreboard
And two seconds hanging on the clock,
The solemn boy in the center of eyes,
Squeezed by silence
Seeks out the line with his feet,
Soothes his hands along his uniform,
Gently drums the ball against the floor,
Then measures the waiting net,
Raises the ball on his right hand,
Balances it with his left,
Calms it with fingertips,
Breathes,
Crouches,
Waits, and then through a stretching of stillness,
Nudges it upward.

The ball
Slides up and out,
Lands,
Leans,
Wobbles,
Wavers,
Hesitates,
Exasperates,
Plays it coy
Until every face begs with unsounding screams—
And then
                       And then
                                               And then,
Right before the ROAR-UP
Dives down and through.

       —Edwin A. Hoey

I especially love the word "exasperates" in this poem.

Poem of the Week

Holes

Holes are shy and dull and round.
They're nothing, but don't remind them.
They live in sweaters, socks and crowns.
In flutes and Swiss cheese, holes abound.
And they hardly ever make a sound.
And some end up in the lost and found.
But most are buried in the ground.
You have to dig to find them.
Holes.

by Tim Wynne-Jones

I am trying something new this month with my class.  I want to expose my students to poetry, but without taking lots of time to analyze it in a way that makes their eyes glaze over and puts them to sleep.  I also want the poetry to connect with other lessons, including science, music, geography and history.   To introduce the language arts block tomorrow, I will read the above poem outloud.  Then, over rest of the days of the week, I will read it aloud, project the poem, have the students read it aloud, have a copy ready for a poetry collection notebook, and once pasted in the notebook, have students illustrate the poem. 
 
I wasn't sure which poem to start with, so I began with Holes, a novel by Louis Sachar, that the class is reading for a novel study.  Googling "poems related to the book Holes",  I found a website that has a number of poems that do exactly that.  Now I have a selection of poems to choose from, like the above poem, that go along with the novel study.  Also, we are beginning a read aloud called The Maestro by Tim Wynne-Jones (the author of the poem), and this will give the students another connection to the poem.  The most important thing for me as a teacher for this class, besides creating a safe learning environment, is broadening my students' schema.