Let's see...a blog post....I sort of remember how to do one of those I think....

We've been doing poetry in my class. My idea teaching poetry is that the students are scared of it and they don't like it, and if I'm supposed to be introducing them to poetry, I have to make it seem less scarey and at least seem to be almost enjoyable. So, I've spent a lot of time just reading poetry to them and with them, and I have them doing an assignment where they get to just read a ton of poetry that they choose and collect it in a little volume (and only analyze it a little bit).

I also had them read poetry this week. They had to choose a 20+ line poem, and read it to the class. It went really well overall. Some of them even seemed to enjoy it. They read all kinds of things: Frost, John Clare, Shel Silverstein, John Donne, Psalms (which were really well-done), and a couple of things they had written themselves. One of the best readings was by a student who read "I'm Gettin' Nutt'n for Christmas" (his theme for the other project is Christmas poems), and it stuck out from the others and was hilarious.

One fellow, however, skipped the poetry reading day, and so he was supposed to make it up Monday. He got up in front of the class with his poem printed up. Instead of the twenty or so lines everyone else had, though, he had a five page poem. The poem: "Old MacDonald Had a Farm." I would have been quite fine with this; I told them they could read anything that could be construed as a poem. I didn't care, so long as they read it. The guy got up, and was obviously embarassed at his choice, though, and he asked me if he had to read the entire five-pages of "Old MacDonald Had a Farm."

I acted like I hadn't heard the question. It seemed somewhat obvious to me that it would be ok to cut off "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" somewhere after the twenty line point, without going through five pages of different animals.

He didn't quite make it to twenty lines though. One-and-a-half lines in, the embarassment overcame him, and he sat down. He's going to read something else next time, right after we finish nap-time.