Thursday, November 15, 2012

Week 12

This week we shift our focus to House and Home, the theme of Week 12. Our sample poem comes from First Grade and is by Charles Ghigna, also known as Father Goose. Here is just a nugget from the poem to give you a taste.

My Tree House
   by Charles Ghigna

Welcome to my tree house,
my free house,
my me house,

....
where the air is fresher,
no pressure,
where treetops swish and sway,

where I come to look at
the books that
take me far away.

[The entire poem is available in The Poetry Friday Anthology on p. 78.]


Take 5 Activities

1. Before sharing this poem, take a moment to encourage students to close their eyes and imagine a big leafy tree, a ladder up high, and a tree house. Then continue by reading this poem aloud.

2. Next, invite students to join you in reading aloud the first stanza. If necessary, write the words tree, free, me (on cards) to cue them to the order of these words in reading the stanza.

3. For discussion: If you could have a tree house, what would it be like?

4. Sometimes poets arrange their words into groups called stanzas. This poem contains 5 stanzas. A stanza can have any number of lines. Help students see that this poem is made up of tercets (3-line stanzas).

5. Follow up with “The Front Yard Where the Maple Tree Stands” by Allan Wolf (4th Grade, Week 12).

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Time to join the Poetry Friday fray hosted by the lovely Anastasia Suen at Booktalking here.

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And don't forget to enter out e-book giveaway contest.  Details are BELOW.

5 comments:

  1. There IS something really special (dare I say "magical"?) about a tree house and I think part of that is how it is built--usually by children themselves or as a family project. I have fond memories of the tree house fort that my husband built with my son when Andrew was four. (They built it under a huge cottonwood that our house inspector called a "widow-maker" because, as he predicted, it dropped huge branches during storms!)

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  2. "my free house,
    my me house,"

    Love this!

    I'm hosting Poetry Friday today at my new blog location...on my webpage: http://asuen.com/blog/

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  3. Okay, I meant to put the comment here, not as a reply to Anastasia's comment;)

    And the comment was:

    Love this tree fort poem. Brings back memories of many tree forts I have known as a child (our tree fort and friends' tree forts.

    You've captured it wonderfully, Charles!

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  4. I love all the sh sounds in the "fresher," "pressure" stanza. Sounds like the wind in the branches.

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