Writer's Website of the Week: Literacy Roots

I'm inspired by a new blog called Literacy Roots, in which a fellow friend and graduate student of education posts reflections on language study and teaching writing:

The week before last, I had the pleasure of spending two days in a high school English class as a guest teacher/ substitute. I observed a variety of student achievement artifacts to include poetry, artwork, and copies of college acceptance letters plastered all over the classroom walls for all eyes to see and admire. One such display of work I took a liking to was an I am poetry project. Using various sentence starters, the students had created poems about themselves that represented their personal histories, hopes, dreams and self-perceptions.

I copied down the sentence starters and typed them up to give to my workshop students. I wanted to see how well they liked using these self-reflective sentence starters as a warm-up writing practice. The results were positive. For the remaining hour, the kids thought about, and shared their ideas as they were writing. We finished with the students reading their pieces in front of the group in an author's chair format. From this project, I felt as though I had learned so much more about my students as individuals in just one hour.

And her post reminds me of my own I Am poem, written as part of a collection in 6th grade:

Polaroid transfer: the author picks apples in Sebasopol, CA

I am
a leaf, soaring
through the wind
glistening
in the sun, slowly
changing
colors. I am me.

I am
a cloud, shedding
tears onto the earth below
drifting
everywhere. I am me.

I am
a flower, growing
bigger and brighter
varying
in shape and color,
making the world
a more beautiful place.
I am me.

NRZ, 1981