Name Poems

Paige is new like a warm, blueberry bagel

Paige moves like a daisy growing

Paige sounds like a hummingbird

Paige is yellow like a tumbleweed

Paige means beautiful drawings

Paige, Kindergarten

Names are something most people are pretty passionate and opinionated about. If you've ever named a child, or even a pet for that matter with someone else, you realize really quickly that certain names trigger strong emotions. This is exactly why name poems are fun to write with students. It's fun to name things, and to find out the meaning of our own names.

One of the poems I like to have my students write each year is a name poem. We first start out talking about why our parents gave us our names. Some students don't know why their parents chose their name. Others are named for their mother's best friend, a grandparent, a sibling who passed, a special moment in their parent's lives, or just because their name sounded pleasing to both parents, and they could agree on it. After naming my own children, I have come to realize that picking a name that both my husband and I could both be happy with was no small feat, and sometimes that is enough. Students usually have lots of opinions about their names. Some love their name because it is unique. While others dislike their name because it has a strange spelling, or people can never pronounce it. Some, like I did when I was little, feel their name is too popular. Others enjoy having a name that honors someone in their family.

Regardless of their feelings about their names, I tell the students that like everything we do in poetry we are going to look at our names in a different way. First, I tell students to give their name an age. I ask them to think of their name and to decide if it is an old name, or a new name. This answer doesn't need to have anything to do with how long their name has been used historically. I tell students that my name, Sara, is an old name because it comes from the bible, however that doesn't mean I have to think of it that way. I can think of it any way I like because it is my name. There isn't a wrong answer for this. I could say that Sara is new like a bright, copper penny, or it is old like the dusty pages of a worn out book.

Name Poem Activity (Click here for free Name Poem Activity)

Next, we imagine that if our names could move how they would move. For example, Ezra moves like a lightning bolt, or Sara scampers like an arctic hare through the snow. I usually try to demonstrate how several names would move for the students. If my theatrics don't inspire an idea, they usually give my students, or a teacher passing by in the hall something to laugh at.

Conner

Conner reminds me of ancient empires, mighty and strong

Conner is old like crumbling castles, or remains of once mighty cities

Conner moves quickly like a hare

Conner is the green of growing plants

Conner feels like a solid stone wall, protecting a city

Conner looks like a ship approaching a harbor, coming from the endless distance of the blue sea

Conner means ponderer, a thinker who plays and thinks of strategies carefully

Conner means the one who is much wanted, always a friend waiting

Conner, 6th grade

Then, I ask students to imagine how their name would sound if it had a voice. Would it boom like a foghorn, or drip drop like an icicle melting? What would the voice of someone with their name sound like? What color would their name be? Yellow like buttery sponge cake, or prickly pear pink? Some years I have students give their names a number, and an explanation of why it would be that particular number. A name might be the number 13 because it is an unlucky name, or the number 4 because it is the number of people in their family. Other years, students will use the five senses to describe their names, or use their name in a line of alliteration. Sara stares at sparkly stars.

Cherish

Cherish means to hold dear everyone

Cherish reminds me of a forest casting green and blue shadows on the forest floor

Cherish is old like the sky and the mountains

Cherish moves like the pond in a vast area, slightly moving

Cherish is white like freshly made snow

Cherish is a new viper zooming around town

Cherish’s voice is like a whisper barely being heard

6th grade

Finally, I always look up each student's name and find the meaning of their names, and the language their name comes from. Students love seeing what their name means, and what everyone elses' name means. To find their names' meanings I just look at www.behindthename.com, or a baby name website. Sometimes I have to look up a variant of the name to find its meaning, but I can usually find something for each student. I save the name meaning sheet until the end of the lesson because it causes considerable excitement and chaos. Students often include their name meaning at the end of their poems. When students don't like what their names means, I encourage them to invent their own name meaning. For instance, I prefer my name, Sara, meaning book lover versus it's real meaning which is God's princess.

Poetry is the perfect vehicle for thinking about our names in different ways. Whenever we think of a name it sparks images, and the personality of a person we've known who carries that name. Names remind us of people we want to remember, and perhaps people we'd rather forget. Names have layers of depth beyond just the way they look on paper, or they sound to the ear. They have a meaning and a life of their own.

Emma

Emma is as young as a little blue ocean wave waving around.

Emma is like a boring school day moving to the weekend.

Emma is as Mint green as mint ice cream on a hot sunny day.

Emma is the sound of wind blowing on a cold autumn day,

Emma is the smell of a freshly baked apple pie coming out of the oven,

Emma is the sight of a colorful poem waving around in the wind

Emma, 3rd grade

Recipe Poems

Recipes are stories passed from generation to generation, neighbor to neighbor, friend to friend, teacher to student, and even stranger to stranger. The recipes that we choose to share with people, speak to the message of ourselves that we want to send to others. Recipes can convey the story of our heritage, the traditions we grew up with, our sense of adventure, or our desire to comfort and help others.

Lately my classroom has been going through a recipe writing craze! It started in a writing workshop when I mentioned that students could write a recipe while they are working on their writing. One of my third grade girls ran with the idea, and when students shared their writing with the class she shared her Recipe for a Love Potion. The Potion was magical, imaginative and so much fun. Her ingredients included one tear of joy, the wart from a good witch, and some glittery pixie dust along with many other beautiful details. The rest of my class was blown away by her ideas and inspired. 

After that, recipes began popping up in other student's writing. Students wrote real recipes. One student wrote down her family's special recipe for chocolate chip cookies. Students wrote recipes they wanted to create. There was a series of smoothie recipes one of my students wanted to try out someday. After she wrote them down, she followed them up by writing fictional newspaper reviews written by fictional people who loved her new creations. These articles and recipes had voice and energy, and they were something I never would have thought up for an assignment. Many students liked creating imaginative recipes for things like the perfect football player, or the perfect soccer player. They created recipes for  haunted houses, zombies, and witches (it's October, so we definitely have a Halloween theme happening).

The format of a recipe is fun to play with when we write, and it is perfect for writing poems. Every year, I teach recipe poems. But before we write the actual poem, I usually first teach a lesson about the language and format of recipes. 

Recipes start with a title that tells the reader what the recipe is for. A title should also appeal to the reader. It should sound interesting to the ear, and appeal to the reader's sense of intrigue. 

Next, a recipe has a list of ingredients. Here is where I teach the students how good recipes need to include measurements in the ingredients. It is not enough to list that someone needs eggs for a recipe, we must list how many eggs. 3rd graders and even 6th graders need to review how we measure things for cooking. We list on the board cups and 1/2 cups, Tbsp and tsp, ounces, pats, lbs, pinches, and dashes, and sprinkles. 

After the ingredients, recipes have instructions on how to put all the ingredients together in the right order. Here is where the language of transitions are needed to stress to the students that readers need to know the correct order a recipe is created. Words like: first, then, next, finally help guide a reader through a recipe. 

There are special tools that we use for recipes: whisks, pans, spatulas, blenders, mixing bowls, measuring cups, knifes, cutting boards, muffin pans, etc. Using these tools for even an imaginative recipe for an ogre, or the worst day ever, makes a recipe sound more authentic. 

Finally, I like to discuss strong verbs for recipe poems. We brainstorm words like saute, chop, julienne, fry, bake, mince, blend so that our recipes will pop with strong word choices and voice. 

Then I let the students go. The only restrictions for recipe poems are that they have to be a recipe for something that a person couldn't really make. I don't want their family's recipe for apple pie, I want a recipe straight from their imaginations. My students have come up with wonderfully creative and unexpected recipe poems. If you haven't ever played with the recipe format for creative writing, give it a shot, and try out the recipe for an amazing poem.

Recipe Poem Instructions, Examples, and Brainstorming Worksheets.

Recipe for Comfort

Ingredients

-1 bowl comfort -1 pinch of sleep

-a sprinkle of family -your pet

-warmth -1 lbs. of home sweet home

-dash of memories -1 cup laughter and play

-handful of peace -an evening walk

-a bit of friendship -1 corn stalk

-music -1 pint joy

Directions

Mix a bowl of pleasure, add a pinch of sleep

Sprinkle on some family

And stir in your pet to make it sweet

Simmer up some warmth

And a pound of Home Sweet Home

Boil a dash of memories from all the places your roam

Season with some love and caring

Grill up a summer day

Marinate a moment

Stuffed with laughter and play

Microwave some peace

And fry an evening’s walk

Saute a bit of friendship and a big, tall corn stalk

Add in some music that goes on for all time

Defrost a pint of joy that you have when you see sunshine

Pour on some braveness that you have when you’ve worked up your nerve

And finally after all that work

Your comfort is ready to serve

By:Sadie, 4th grade

Recipe for an Unappy Mom, by Abby, 6th grade

Similes and Silly Body Poems

Do your students ever tell you they can't think of anything to write? We've all been there. We are asked to write something, or we want to write and suddenly we can't think of anything we want to say. I often tell students to think about their memories, things they like to do, write a list, doodle a drawing, or when all else fails look around the room to see something that inspires words to start flowing.

One source of inspiration, that we carry with us everwhere we go, is our bodies. As human beings we are pretty obsessed with ourselves. We try to impose our ideas, our feelings, and even our bodies on everything around us. Think about it. Our chairs and couches have backs, arms, and legs. Clocks have faces and hands. Books have spines. We rise to the head of the class. We get to the heart of the matter, and always strive to not be the butt of a joke.

I don't think human's body obsession is all hubris, I think it comes down to the fact that we understand the world through what we know. Our bodies and other human bodies are all around us, and it's easy to think about how they are like, and not like everything else we see. That is why they are the perfect source of insipriation when students are learning about similes.

Similes are comparisons between two different things that use the words like or as. Easy examples of similes are "My dad is like a bear", or "My dad is as hairy as a bear." Body parts are also easy to compare to something else, and make into similes. The first thing I have students do in this poetry lesson is brainstorm a huge list of body parts on the board. It may seem like this is an unnecessary step, but I always get one or two students who write one simile such as "My hair is like spaghetti" and then  "claim" they can't think of any other body parts. Generating a list, gives students lots of options for similes. It can also help students who are self-conscious about their spelling by giving them a quick reference for words that they might be scared to try and spell on their own.

Next, I have students use similes to compare at least 5 of their body parts to something else. Students usually have a fun time creating these poems, and the results have been pretty amazing. In years past, if students finished early I encouraged them to draw pictures of themselves with their simile body parts. The result was drawings in which people had spaghetti and meatball hair, bubble gum cheeks, and tree branch arms. The drawings were funny and quirky, and we all got a kick out of seeing them.

My Body

By: Finley, 3rd grade

My toes are stars in the night

My head is like a wooly mammoth

My arms are like tent poles

My blood veins are like chocolate milk in a long straw

My cheeks are as red as roses

My hair is like spaghetti

My bones are a museum

My nose is like a pencil

My back is like a turtle’s shell

My neck is like a butterfly

My lips are like pink spaghetti

My heart is a rose

A few years ago I can across the book, My Dog is as Smelly as Dirty Socks: And Other Funny Family Portraits by Hanoch Piven. It went along perfectly with teaching similes, and body poems. The book is about a little girl who is asked to draw a family portrait in class. She does, but is unhappy with the results because the portrait doesn't show all the little details that make her family so special. She then redoes the portrait using similes. Then a picture is put together with all the parts making a portrait of each family member. For instance her dad is nutty so he has a nut for a mouth. Her dog smells like dirty socks so in the picture dirty socks are used for her dog's ears.

I thought this book would be perfect to share with my students when we were learning similes, and creating our body poems. I also wanted to think of a way we could replicate the book's art using technology. Two years ago, I had my students write body poems about their family members, and then I had them try to create a portrait of their family in Google Drawing. I used my family as the example the first year. I described my youngest daughter's cheeks as being as pink and round as balloons. In my drawing, I found pictures of balloons using Google Images and used them as her cheeks in her portrait. This year I had my students write body poems about themselves, and now they are creating simile portraits using the same idea using Google Drawing.

 If you don't have access to chromebooks or technology on a regular basis this activity could easily be done using paper and magazines. Students could cut out objects to become their body parts and paste them to a piece of paper. I have never done that in class, but I think the results would be wonderful and fun.

Body poems are a silly and simple way to teach your students about similes. The human body is also a great inspiration whenever you, or your students, need to break through writer's block. Give similes and body poems a try, and watch your classroom's body of poetry grow!

The Fib: Poetry, Science, and Magnificent Math Patterns

Sometimes we limit ourselves by defining our own identities. I hear it all the time from friends and family, students and teachers. Math isn't my subject, or I'm not a reader, or I wish I could write poetry, but I teach math or science. We create boxes around ourselves and our subjects, and therefore invent limitations that don't really exist.

I'll admit that I have definitely been guilty of this way of thinking. I taught 6th grade Language Arts for 10 years. When I taught English and reading, I might have been the go-to-person for proof reading a story, or thinking of a creative topic for a persuasive writing essay, but nobody was banging down my door to ask me how to solve an equation, or plot a coordinates on a graph. However, in the real world, math, science, social studies, writing and reading aren't solitary subjects. For those of us who dare to venture out of our subject areas, Fibonacci Poems are a great and easy way to incorporate writing into a math class, or pull science into English. Fibonacci Poems are simple to learn, and a fun form for students to play.

1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21...The Fibonacci Sequence appears in math, science, nature, and in 2006 a social media blog spiraled the sequence into the poetry world as a 6 line, 20 syllable poem called the Fib. Gregory K. Pincus had no idea what he was starting when he posted a short poem on April 20, 2006. Pincus was playing around with haiku poems, and syllables, when he thought of using the Fibonacci Sequence as the syllable count in his poem. He posted his poem on his blog, and six days later had 32,000 visitors to his blog site and people around the world were creating, posting, and playing with this "new" and fun form of poetry.

What is the Fibonacci Sequence?

The Fibonacci Sequence is a series of numbers 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34...the next number is found by adding the two previous numbers together. 1+1=2, 1+2=3, 2+3=5, 3+5=8 and so on. Leonardo Pisano Bollono, an Italian mathematician, nicknamed Fibonacci, is credited with spreading the idea of the sequence, although it was known about in India for hundreds of years.

When squares are made in the width of the Fibonacci Sequence it creates a nice spiral that we see in nautilus shells, pine cones, flowers, animals, and even galaxies.


Here are the links of a couple You Tube videos that my students have enjoyed about the Fibonacci Sequence. The first one explains different places the sequence is found in nature. The Fibonacci Sequence in Nature. The second is called Doodling in Math, Fibonacci, and Being a Plant. It evolves from doodling spirals in math class, to a look at the Fibonacci Sequence and how it intertwines with math and nature. It is fast-paced and interesting, and usually produces weeks of spiral doodles from my students.

What is a Fibonacci Poem?

A Fibonacci Poem is a poem that uses the Fibonacci Sequence to determine the number of words or syllables contained in each line of poetry. When I taught 8th grade I used syllable count, but I found that word count is easier for 3rd-6th grade. There are several versions of the Fibonacci Poem, but I only teach my students three forms.  The first type of fib is called the Simple Fib. It builds from 1 word up to 8 words. It can either be shaped like steps, or a pyramid.

Simple Fib                                                                                           Simple Fib
1    Leaves                                                                                               Moths
1    falling                                                                                                flying
2    down like                                                                                      gently through
3    floating, fall balloons                                                                  the meadow fields
5    so many colors to choose                                                      flying fast through the wind
8    but you may pick only one special leaf                    feeling free, gliding in the midnight breeze

        -Kayla 6th grade                                                                      -Alexis, 6th grade

The Diamond Fib uses the Fibonacci Sequence up to the number 5, and then reverses the numbers back down to one: 1,1,2,3,5,3,2,1,1. The result is a poem that is shaped like a diamond.

Diamond Fib, created in Google Drawing by Finley, 3rd grade

Finally, I teach the Butterfly Fib. This poem starts out the sequence with 5 words, and then narrows to 3, 2, 1. Then the pattern reverses the sequence back to 1,2,3, and ends with 5. The pattern, if looked at from the side, looks like a butterfly. 5, 3,2,1,1,2,3,5

Butterfly Fib:

Lightning

Lightning is frightening like dragons

it travels fast

super fast

zig

zag

across the

black night sky

Lightning is frightening like dragons

-Josh, 3rd grade

For some students, the Fibonacci Sequence just clicks as their form of poetry. I normally ask the students to try out at least two forms of the Fib, but I often have a few students who come back the next day with pages and pages of Fib Poems. They love playing with the pattern and the number sequence. They create new patterns and shapes with their words. The Fib is a playful and simple way for all of us to incorporate math, science, and writing together.

Fibonacci Poem Explanation, Examples, and Activity Ideas

                                                           

First Day I Am Poems

A mind is space with lots of things to discover.

I have heard it said that we understand the world through metaphors. Therefore, if you understand metaphors, then you understand the world. I'm not sure if metaphors can make any of us world experts, but I do think metaphors are a wonderful way to break the ice, and understand my students.

In my classroom, we jump right into poetry and the power of the metaphor the first day of school. I teach a mini-lesson about poetry and metaphors, and then we all write an "I Am" Poem. The reason I start with the metaphor versus the simile, which for many is more natural and easier to write, is that the metaphor holds power. When Romeo says in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet that "Juliet is the sun" it means that life without her would not be possible. The sun is the center of every one's existence. It sustains life on Earth, without Juliet, Romeo's entire existence ceases to exist.

If Romeo, were to use a simile instead to describe Juliet and say, "Juliet is like the sun" then it would simply mean she was dazzling, brilliant, beautiful to behold, but not life sustaining.Saying that Juliet is like the sun is not worthy of sacrificing one's family and life. That's why I like to start with the metaphor.

A metaphor simply put is a comparison between two different things. It does not use the words like or as. The first metaphor I always teach students is, "My dad is a bear." Then I ask them what it means if someone says that their dad is a bear. Most kids answer that it means that their dad is cranky, or ferocious, or angry. My favorite answer though was from a 3rd grade girl who said she knew exactly what the phrase my dad is a bear meant because she went swimming with her dad, and he had thick, black hair all over his back. He was definitely a bear.

Next we talk about our 5 senses. They are so important in writing. Adding a smell or a sound can wake a piece of writing up. Typically, humans are very focused on how something looks.  Our strongest sense is our vision, up to about 2/3 of our cerebral cortex is devoted in some way to our sight. Next comes auditory, touch, smell, and finally taste. So naturally, writers, especially young writers, use sight descriptions in their writing more than any other sense. It's a challenge for students to use the other senses in their writing and especially to describe themselves. I ask my students to write an "I Am" poem using all 5 of their senses.

Students can typically come up with a sight metaphor to describe themselves quite easily. I am the sight of an eagle soaring in the sky. I am the sight of a rosebud blooming. However, when asked to describe themselves as a taste or a sound, students pause. I like to joke and ask them if they should write what they literally taste like? I lick my arm. Students always laugh, and tell me no. What can we do then for a taste describing ourselves? Usually a student will suggest that we could use one of our favorite foods for our taste. This is a good idea that I try to guide students towards if they get stuck on creating a taste metaphor. Every once in a while a student will think about how there are also tastes in the air like dew in the morning, or the stale dustiness of an attic, or the sugary sweetness of cotton candy at a fair. These type of tastes create unique and startling images.

Before, we start writing metaphors, or poetry for that matter in my classroom, I like to remind my students, the reluctant writers, and the writers who believe that poetry is all about sunsets, rainbows, and love, that poetry doesn't have to be beautiful. No one has to be the sight of a butterfly fluttering under a rainbow if he/she doesn't feel that way. Poetry is about creating strong imagery, and touching on real emotions. If someone feels like he/she is the smell of fuzzy toe jam, or a rotten, black banana peel, then that is what he/she should write about. Poetry that is true is always going to effect the audience more than poetry that is falsely frilly and beautiful. One of my favorite metaphors ever came from a 4th grade boy who wrote, "Ear wax is a yellow, banana slug oozing from my ear." Ewwww, but also, yes! Can't we all picture that?

I Am

By: Colton, 6th grade

I am the smell of animal bones in a cave

I’m the sight of a wolf hunting down an elk

I am the feeling of thorns being pulled out of your leg

I am the taste of elk sausage

I'm the feeling of dry, cracked dirt

I am the taste of cold metal

I am the sound of lightning itself

I share my "I Am" poem with my class, and then I let the students create their own. It doesn't matter what sense they use first in their poem, or how many meataphors they write for each sense. Some students will fill up an entire page with an "I Am" poem, and others will stick to just one of each sense. When we are finished writing, I let the students who want to share, read their poems to the class. I am always surprised by how many students are willing to share their poetry on the first day of school, even middle schoolers. For each student who reads, I listen very carefully and pull out one line that struck me. I try to celebrate this line by saying that I loved the line where the reader said he was the smell of animal bones in a cave, or by asking the class if they couldn't picture exactly what the reader was saying when she said she was the clattering sound of rain hitting a car? When the students know you are hearing their poetry, everyone is more inclined to read aloud. I have even noticed that other students are more likely to share what they noticed about another student's poem if I model that I am listening and hearing the imagery.

Then I type each one and put it on a bulletin board for my students to see the next day. This was quite a task when I taught 6th grade because I might have to type up 75 "I Am" poems the first day of school.  Now that I teach 3rd grade, typing 20-25 poems is a bit more manageable. yet still challenging with all the activity a first day can bring. However, regardless the number of poems I have to type, getting that bulletin board up is always worth while. As soon as students notice the board on the second day, they hover around it. First, they look to see their poem, everyone wants to see his/herself recognized, then they start to read other student's poetry. I will hear students pointing out strong lines, or funny lines in everyone else's poems. I keep this bulletin board up all year. It is usually the first thing students will take their parents to see at Open House, or a parent/teacher conference.

Throughout the year, I can read the poems, and it always makes me smile at how fitting they often are for a particular student's personality. Colton is a hunter with a dark sense of humor. Ella is a gymnast, so it makes sense that she wrote she is flexible and bendable. In the spring, I take the poems off the board,and give them back to the student's on the last day of school. It's a ritual that make me feel a little sad, and also like a class has come full circle. While metaphors might not be the key to understanding my entire world, they do help me build relationships, and give me insight into who my students are each year.

My Example "I Am" Poem
"I Am" Instructions and Student Examples

I Am

By: Ella, 3rd grade

I am the taste of hot cocoa on a cold morning

I am the smell of sweet, sugary flowers

I am the sight of a beautiful rainbow after a cold rainy day

I am the sound of thunder rumbling, lightning striking,

and the clattering sound of rain hitting cars that are zooming past

I am the sugary taste of honey and chai tea on a cold rainy day

I am a smooth skipping stone

I am the sound of skipping rock

I am the touch of a kitten

I am the sound of an ocean breeze

I am the sound of a butterfly flapping

I am the sight of a puffer fish puffing

I am the sight of love

I am the birds chirping

I am bendable

I am flexible

By the way, I in no way came up with the "I Am" idea for a poem. Many teachers use "I Am" poems in some form or another when students write poetry. There are a ton of templates teachers can use for this poem out there, but I like to stick to using the 5 senses. John Clare is credited with writing a poem called I Am! in either 1844 or 1845. It was written when he was in a mental asylum, and felt forsaken by both friends and family. I have never shared this version of the poem with my students, but it is quite a beautiful and haunting poem.

*Five Senses

Bringing Words to Life

                                                 

If you write or teach poetry than you are most likely a logophile, a lover of words. I love to read. I love to write, and therefore I love words. In poetry, like any type of writing, words are important. They seem to hold special weight in poetry since words are sparser than in prose, and ideally more thoughtfully chosen.

When I started teaching poetry to my students, I wanted to spend a couple of days celebrating words, and thinking about word choice. How do we choose our words? What are our favorite words? What words have stronger impact than others? I read a few lesson ideas about students composing favorite word lists to get them thinking in-depth about their word choices, and decided I needed to give it a shot in my class.

I excitedly set about trying to write my favorite word list. I thought I’d try ten words. For me this was a difficult task. It turned out, I loved lots of words, and for lots of different reasons. Some words are fun to say like: flibbertigibbet, splat, gooey, pitter-patter. These words have a sound to them that rolls off the tongue, and just sound amazing. Students are naturally drawn to onomatopoeia words, sound words like: boom, kerploosh, buzz, for the same reason.

Other words have special meaning. If you love reading, as I do, then words like: books, library, story, and poem evoke a fond  association with the word. For many of my students the love of an activity creates a love of certain words like: soccer, ballet, video games, or football.

This student spent a lot of time working on his parents ranch and participating in rodeo events.

There are words that we love because they are beautiful in sound and image: intricate, gossamer, melancholy, murmur, oceanic and firefly are some of my favorite. There are also words that are delightful because of their ugliness: fester, gnarled, pus, booger, maggot.

Food words bring to mind so many of our senses, taste, smell, sight, texture (feeling),even sounds are activated. When I think of the word bacon, the word sizzle also automatically comes to mind.  Food words also incorporate many amazing foreign words into our vocabulary: fettucine, sushi, enchiladas, cous cous, tahini, and more. Plus, students love trying to make everyone else in the room hungry, especially before lunch.

Fun food words.

Place words often show up on favorite word lists. A vacation to Hawaii or Florida brings up wonderful memories. The student who has recently moved may want to honor their birth state, or the friends and family whom they are missing. Places that are on my bucket list also frequent my word lists: Tahiti, Mt. Kilimanjaro, Trondheim, Alaska.

Before I taught this word activity with my students, I shared the idea with my husband. He had his doubts about the whole thing, big doubts. He was certain that middle school kids, I taught 6th grade at the time, wouldn’t be very enthused about a favorite word list and probably wouldn’t even come up with ten words. They would be too cool, and didn’t I know that not everyone was a big word nerd like I was?

I was determined to prove him wrong, so when I introduced the lesson of the favorite word list to my class I immediately made the challenge for the students not to have to come up with ten favorite words, but to be able to narrow down all of their favorite words to a list of only ten. How, I asked, would they be able to write down only ten favorite words, when they all had at least twenty or fifty favorite words? They could only write a list of ten favorite words, not fifteen, and not even eleven. Although some students gave me a strange look when I told them this, instead of complaining that they didn’t have even ten favorite words, I heard a few groans about only getting to write down ten.  Some students have tried to bargain with me for eleven or twelve words, but nobody in my classes, in all the years I’ve taught this lesson has ever complained that they couldn’t think of at least ten!

Top Ten Favorite Word List (Click here for a simple favorite word list to use with students.)

My Top Ten Favorite Words (Right Now!)

Students in middle school, or maybe any grade for that matter, do need a few thoughts before starting their lists. I always tell them to keep the words appropriate so that everyone can enjoy the lists in the hallway. I make sure to tell them that I always put all of the lists up in the hallway. Then I also encourage them to stick to words that they know the meaning. I once had a sixth grade boy put the word tampon on his list because he heard his sisters and mom talking about them at home. I asked him politely, and in private, if he knew what the word meant. He said of course, and asked if I knew what it meant? I assured him that I did. The next day during lunch, he came in head down, and bright red to apologize. Turns out, he didn’t know what the word meant, and when his mom explained it to him, he was mortified. Luckily, he had not shared the word with the class, and it was easy to change his list before it was up for the public to view.  The story always makes me smile because it does show the power of words. His older sisters had used the word in such secretive manner, that it became full of intrigue and mystery to him. This intrigue was only amplified when they, of course, wouldn’t tell their little brother what it meant. Sharing a story similar to this will preempt inappropriate words, both unintentional and intentional, from showing up on students’ lists.

Once the students write their lists, I share mine, and I encourage them to share theirs with the class. Students are very enthusiastic about sharing their lists so I always save a good 15 to 20 minutes for this, and when time is short have to limit the share to their top two favorite words. Sharing usually causes other students to want to change or add words to their own lists, and inspires those with incomplete lists to fill theirs in. Then the students pick one word on their list that they will illustrate and color and bring to life on paper. What the students come up with always blows me away. Every year, I’m surprised with their creativity and artistic talents.

If you teach poetry, and want students to try out a fun lesson that focuses on word choice, give this lesson a shot. It is one of my favorite lessons to teach each year, and it always launches interesting and exciting discussions about words. You might be surprised to find you have a classroom full of logophiles too.

Student example of favorite word brought to life.