Thursday, May 9, 2013

Week 36

It's hard to believe, but it is our last week in our year of sharing a poem every Friday in grades K-5 with The Poetry Friday Anthology. For Week 36 our theme is "Looking Forward" and our sample poem comes from second grade. Here is the poem by Allan Wolf in its entirety.


The Secret Seed
by Allan Wolf

A seed holds tomorrow
inside her shell.
What will she be?
She will not tell.
To find out what,
you’ll have to wait
and watch her grow
from grain to great.

[This poem can be found on p. 142 of The Poetry Friday Anthology.]

Take 5 Activities

1. Heighten interest in this poem with a small poetry prop— a tiny seed (of any kind or size). Hold the seed in your hand and extend your hand open as you read the poem.

2. Next, invite students to echo read the poem, repeating each line after you read each line aloud.

3. For discussion: What kinds and sizes of seeds have you seen or planted?

4. In this poem, alternating lines end with rhyming words. Guide students in identifying the rhyming pairs (shell/tell; wait/great). Read the poem aloud again and pause before the final rhyming word in each pair and invite students to complete the rhyme. Talk about what the words in the final line (from grain to great) suggest (growing from a tiny seed to something great).

5. Connect this poem with another poem about transformation, “Tadpole Wishes” by Terry Webb Harshman (Kindergarten, Week 7).


If you have been sharing a poem with young people every Friday, we would love to hear about it-- especially if you've used any of the poems from The Poetry Friday Anthology. And if you have not yet made the leap into Poetry Friday, we hope you'll think about trying it next year. If you need help, consider getting your own copy of The Poetry Friday Anthology. We now have two editions-- one for K-5 and one for middle school (grades 6-8). Both offer a poem every week along with teaching activities tied to Common Core standards (and TEKS in Texas).

Meanwhile, check out what other bloggers are doing this Poetry Friday at the round up hosted this week by Anastasia at Booktalking. See you there!

4 comments:

  1. I adore this poem--the sound and the simplicity of it. And I love the way that different readers--depending on where they are in life--will take away the meaning that they need.

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  2. Ah, yes, the seed...so many possibilities! Thanks for participating in Poetry Friday!

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  3. Hi, Sylvia and Janet. I'll have to bring this poem when I teach Fibonacci poetry next week. We start the workshop looking at flowers whose petals fall within the math sequence, beginning with one seed. Thanks for posting it!

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