Perhaps one day a week,  say Mondays, I’ll write about a teaching tip that I have picked up through the years.  One tip that has kept me enjoying teaching is to always keep trying something new and different.  This year I was determined to teach myself and one of my classes how to blog.  We are just getting it going, but both blogs are up and running. The blogs are fun and exciting.  TAKS test review they are not!

Today, I received some information from a much younger teaching friend about teaching a form of poetry called a lullaby poem.  I had seen her talk about this idea several years ago, but I couldn’t remember exactly how the process worked.  The student thinks of a lullaby, song, nursery rhyme, saying or something that he/she can remember someone singing or saying to him in his very early childhood.  The song could be something like the Itsy Bitsy Spider.  The student writes that down and numbers the lines with even numbers only.  The student then writes in prose a description of the person who sang it and the circumstances.  After underlining phrases that stand out in the prose, the phrases are numbered with odd numbers.

The two are then combined to create a poem.  The lines are written in numerical order; thus, alternating the song and the prose  creates a poem.  The project makes a great gift for a mother or grandmother or father.  I’m very excited about trying this tomorrow with some of my classes.  Maybe I’ll share one with you if I can get permission!