On Valentine’s Day last Thursday, I challenged my students to write a love poem without using the word love. On Facebook I had read Charles Ghinga’s poem for his wife Debra. I used it as a mentor text.
Page of word groups from Writing Poetry From the Inside Out by Sandford Lyne.
I used a poetry resource by Sandford Lyne called Writing Poetry from the Inside Out. In this book, Sandy writes about “Poem Sketching” with word groups. The back is full of pages of word groups. I photocopied one of these pages to give to my students. Each student chose a word group to write from.
Magic happened. Was it writing about love without using the word? the model poem from Charles? the word groups from Sandy? or the magic that happens when writing in a safe community?
We cut out construction paper hearts and wrote our poems on them to give to someone special. I gave mine to Madison because I used a quote of hers. Chloe gave hers to me, probably because I loved it. And Madison gave hers to Chloe. Poetry gifts from the heart.
Love poem gift from Chloe glued into my notebook.
You can read more poems on our kidblog site.
where it’s easy to get lost.
Our feelings are as wild as animals.
like the blossom of a tulip.