Poetry Sisters Ponder the Hippo

The challenge this month was to write to the word ponderous or the image of a hippo. I decided to play around with an old quick write prompt issued by Nikki Grimes at Kate Messner's blog way back in 2014. Based on the examples she shared, I decided I wanted to begin a poem with "Hippo is a __ word." Here's where my poem  went.

Image courtesy of Wallpaper Flare

Hippo is a ponderous word
a barrel-shaped word
a semi-aquatic,
unable to swim word
a yawning, wide open word
a gregarious, booming word
an aggressive and unpredictable word
Keep your hands in the boat
while you float downriver,
observing a bloat of
hippopotamuses and hippopotami
half-submerged
ears twitching, eyes watching
keeping the crocodiles at bay.

Poem ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2020. All rights reserved.

You can read the pieces written by my Poetry Sisters at the links below. As usual, life has gotten in the way for some folks, but they'll be back for other challenges. 

• Tanita Davis
• Rebecca Holmes
• Sara Lewis Holmes
• Kelly Ramsdell
• Laura Purdie Salas
• Liz Garton Scanlon
• Andi Sibley

If you’d like to write with us next month, the challenge is to write a naani poem with the theme of foresight, or autumn, or both. We will be posting on the last Friday of the month (October 30th) and would love to have you join us.

I do hope you'll take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Jone MacCulloch. Happy poetry Friday friends!

Poetry Sisters Look Back

This month's challenge was to pick one of our old poems to revise and/or write a new poem in conversation with it. I went back to a post from May of 2016. Here's how that challenge was defined.

This month the Poetry Seven crew wrote in the form of the tritina. The tritina is composed of 3 tercets and a final line (envoi) that stands alone. Similar to a sestina, though shorter, it uses a set of 3 alternating end words instead of six. The form is: ABC / CAB / BCA / A, B, and C (final line/envoi).

The words we chose from were selected by Tanita. They were: 
     sweet, cold, stone, hope, mouth, thread

I wrote 2 poems back then, one for my father and one for sheer fun. 

Looking back on these old challenges to find a poem to revisit, I was inspired by the words Tanita selected and decided to have another go at this one. Here's my new poem. It was written to this photo.

Stonewall Jackson's plinth, photo by Ryan Patterson

Running Monument Ave

I hold a spark of hope

as I pass by stone

bases, empty and cold

I know this route cold

run it with hope

I won't trip on the stones

In this city, hearts made of stone

send messages cold

quash seeds of hope

But cold stone statues fall, and hope still rises.

Poem ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2020. All rights reserved.

You can read the pieces written by my Poetry Sisters at the links below. As usual, life has gotten in the way for some folks, but they'll be back for other challenges. 

• Tanita Davis
• Rebecca Holmes
• Sara Lewis Holmes
• Kelly Ramsdell
• Laura Purdie Salas
• Liz Garton Scanlon
• Andi Sibley

If you’d like to write with us next month, the theme is ponderous, or an image of a hippo. You may use any form you like. We will be posting on the last Friday of the month (September 25th) and would love to have you join us.

I do hope you'll take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Heidi Mordhorst at my juicy little universe. Happy poetry Friday friends!

#MTBoSBLaugust - Moo-ve It Multiplication

Today I'm sharing another multiplication game. This is a variation on a bump game. It has a cow on it, so that's where Moo-ve it comes from.

In the game, players roll 2 dice and finds the product. They find that product on the board and cover it. If the product is already covered, the player may "bump" their opponent's piece off the board. The first player to get 3 in a row, horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, is the winner.

Here is what the print version looks like.

This is the digital version.

If you would like to try this with your students, you can download the PDF or the Google slides version.

That's it for day 21 of #MTBoSBlaugust. I hope you'll come back tomorrow to see what else I have to share.

#MTBoSBLaugust - Multiplication Four-in-a-Row

I have a number of multiplication games that students can play to practice basic facts. I really like Multiplication Four-in-a-Row. Students are give a number strip or table and begin by placing markers on any two numbers. The first player finds the product and covers that number. The second player moves one of the markers on the number table to create a new number sentence, finds that product, and covers the number. Play continues until one player gets 4 in a row, either horizontally, vertically, or diagonally.

I've been using this paper and pencil version for some time.

If you want to try this with your students, you can download a PDF.

I've also just created a digital version.

If you would like to try this with your students, you can download a copy.

That's it for day 20 of #MTBoSBlaugust. I hope you'll come back tomorrow to see what else I have to share.

#MTBoSBLaugust - Digital Shut the Box

Have you every played Shut the Box? When my son was young, we used to eat at a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant/bar for breakfast. There was a Shut the Box game behind the bar and the owner would hand it to us when we walked in so we could play while we waited for our food. 

Eventually, I made a portable version that fit in my purse. I took small poker chips and wrote the numbers 1-10 on them. I stuck them in a snack size baggie with two dice and we had a game we could play any time, anywhere.

I also made a paper and pencil version for use in class. We laminated some of these and placed additional copies inside sheet protectors for reuse.

If you would like a copy, you can download a PDF.

Kids really enjoy this game, so I've created a digital version too.

If you want to try this with your students, you can download a copy.

That's it for day 19 of #MTBoSBlaugust. I hope you'll come back tomorrow to see what else I have to share.

#MTBoSBLaugust - Subitizing and Recognizing Number Combinations

In working to develop number sense in our second grade students, we spent time on activities that encouraged students to visualize numbers and think about number combinations. We did quick image activities with ten frames, solved Splat! questions (thank you Steve Wyborney!), played Shake and Spill, and conducted other related activities. 

For quick images with ten frames we used both horizontal and vertical sets of ten frame cards. Cards were flashed for 2-3 seconds and then hidden. Students were asked:

• What number did you see?
• How did you see it?
• How many more to 10?

Here's an example of the cards we used.

If you want to try this with your students, you can download a copy of each set of ten frame cards. Click here for the horizontal version. Click here for the vertical version.

Shake and spill is a game we played with two-color counters. Students would take a number of counters (6, for example) in their hands, shake them, and spill them on the desktop. Students then looked at the counters and determined how many of each color without counting. Eventually, the same combinations would keep coming up and students began to recognize that 6 could be made of 0+6. and 1+5, and 2+4, and 3+3, and so on. Once students were familiar with the game, we added in recording sheets. Here's the sheet for 6.

I first learned about Shake and Spill many years ago in an old video series (80s hair and clothes) created by Marilyn Burns. The videos focused on how different manipulatives could be used to teach a range of mathematical ideas. You can read about an updated version of this activity at the Math Solutions site. 

If you want to try this with your students, you can download a PDF file with Shake and Spill for numbers 5-10.

That's it for day 18 of #MTBoSBlaugust. I hope you'll come back tomorrow to see what else I have to share.

#MTBoSBLaugust - Race for a Flat

I think every elementary teacher has played Race for a Flat, that game where students learn to regroup and exchange 10 ones for 1 ten, and 10 tens for 1 hundred, or a flat.

In the past, my students played on a legal-sized place value mat that looked like this.

Some of my students had difficulty with this, so I created this mat for them to use instead. 

The blocks on this mat are composed of centimeter squares, so base-ten blocks fit perfectly. For whatever reason, students found it easier to make trades from ones to tens with the blocks in this format, which surprised me because we tried hard to get them to use ten frames to visualize numbers.

If you want to use this new Race for a Flat mat with your students, you can download a PDF version.
If you want to try the more traditional place value mat, you can download a PDF version of that as well.

That's it for day 17 of #MTBoSBlaugust. I hope you'll come back tomorrow to see what else I have to share.