On the List for the Weekend

Happy Mother's Day!!

I hope all you mothers do something for yourselves today.

My first graders and I finished a poetry unit this week and will celebrate our poetry during our spring family night this week. With the craziness of life (in and out of the classroom), I began to question myself towards the end of this poetry unit. I started to wonder, did I teach them anything? Did my conferring help kids dig deeper? Did I use mentor texts that were simple enough for kids to begin to enjoy and find ideas for their own poetry? Were my mini lessons on track with what most kids needed from day to day? (I could go on with the questions.) Feeling frantic, I opened their workshop folders and began to read and dig deeper into the creating they had done over the past few weeks and then... I began to smile. Really, they had, and most of their best work as poets came when I wasn't hovering over them worried about what they were or weren't getting. Their best pieces came when I let them go.

Maeve found inspiration from a poem in a collection of poetry edited by Georgia Heard called Falling Down the Page. The poem Maeve connected with was called On the Menu for School Today. She wrote a poem called On the List For the Weekend and I think I am hoping you get a chance to read it and do something you want to do today!!