Day -24: Poems

My students are working on a poetry unit, and I was looking through my files for copies of poems by former students. I forgot how good some of my old students' poems were. Here are two. They probably lose something without the kid handwriting and cute illustrations that accompany them, but you'll get the idea.

Ocean

The ocean
is blue
as a
dolphin.
White as
the clouds
crashes like
cars.

STRABERRY'S
Straberry's mmm, mmm,
mmm they are so so
good. When I eat
them they are
like eating ice
cream. I can't
resist eating
straberry's
they are
so so
good
that
instead
of


selling ice cream
and loli pops
they should sell
straberry's lots
of them

Anti-childhood obesity marketers, take note. If anyone wants to license this poem for use in an ad campaign, the copyright holder is a seventh grader now, and I know where to find her. (She wrote most of it in the shape of a strawberry. I'm not sure how well that will translate to this page.)

Examples like these are priceless for teaching my current students how to write poems. Part of me really wants to just toss all my files out at the end of the school year because it will be so time-consuming to sort through them all and decide what's worth keeping. But on the other hand, I can't imagine teaching again without having files full of students' writing to use.