Slice of Life-Of bricks, chalk, and poetry

Every Tuesday, the writing community of Two Writing Teachers hosts Slice of Life. All are welcome to participate by linking up posts or commenting on other participants. 

Our Summer Writing Academy featured poetry, and it was one of my favorite weeks of teaching writing I've ever had. Students read poems, found poems, created poems, and wrote their own poems, and the learning and inspiration that happened from studying words and language so closely was incredible to watch. 

We had a short celebration at the end of the week to share some of the work the students did. Summer is for fun, so we tried hard to incorporate play into the world of our writing. One of those play elements involved sidewalk chalk as a forum for sharing and celebration. Students loved writing their poems on the blacktop, and some of them even got creative with the bricks. Poems and words filled the red bricks of the school wall. Some of the students even created an elaborate and well-engineered pencil that directed and welcomed parents and guests to our poetry celebration. The caption was welcome to the wonder of our writers. 

Unfortunately, the custodians didn't think the brick poetry was as good an idea as we did. I have some advice for all you would-be writers of poetry on bricks--think hard before you allow odes to appear on bricks.. Chalk is a little sticky when it's on red clay.  After listening to the custodians review their summer work lists which did not include scrubbing the outside walls of the school, I volunteered myself and my daughter to come back and remove the poetry (although I do think there could be worse things on the walls of an elementary school!).

Larkin and I had great exercise scrubbing the pencil, the words of welcome, and all the other poems that so happily decorated the bricks.

Happy Writing,