Fifteen #verselove2019 with Anna Roseboro

This week Ethical ELA welcomes the wonderful Anna J. Small Roseboro to inspire us with “A Week of Patterning Poetry.”

Inspiration

Acrostic: Spring is a season we begin thinking about end of school year celebrations honoring students and colleagues, and summer events for family and friends.  Consider writing a poem for that special person. One pattern poem that elicits delight and gratitude is the simple acrostic. For this form, writers insert the honoree’s name in capital letters in a vertical column on the left side of the page.  Then, for each line, add adjectives (words or phrases) that describe that person and begin with the letter on that line. (For ease, insert a two-column table in a Word document, with one row for each letter in the honoree’s name. Then insert letters of the name in left column and descriptors in the right column.)

Process

Pause a moment; think about a colleague or student, family member or friend, whom you respect and appreciate. What words come to mind that express qualities that you admire? To come up with the words that fit your poem, you may find yourself switching out first thoughts for synonyms that express the emotions, abilities, and talents that begin with the letters you have to match. It’s okay to repeat those qualities using different words. Repetition is a poetic device that reinforces the message.

Go ahead, write the name. Consider your relationship with that person. What experiences have you shared? What makes you want to honor that person? What attitudes, behaviors, skills attract you to that honoree? At what upcoming event can you share this poem?

Anna’s Poem

Yes, our sister got teary when she read the birthday card. We learned recently that she framed the poem and hung it on the wall, despite the fact that we hadn’t edited carefully to maintain consistency using only adjectives.  

In fact, this could be a way to distinguish grades on the assignment by requiring use of specific parts of speech: one noun for each letter, one or two adjectives, and/or one adjective phrase in the same order throughout. Or, the assignment could include specification that at least three words from class vocabulary list be included in acrostic poem about the honoree or chosen literary character.

A couple ways to adapt this assignment for students is to invite them to craft an acrostic poem about a person in their lives.  With Mother’s Day and Father’s Day coming in the next two months, some students may decide to write their poem about a parent, or someone is like a mother or father to them.  

As an option for a poetry notebook, or to summarize their reading, invite singles, pairs or small groups, to write about a favorite character from readings you shared as a class, in books they read on their own, or even someone in the news that the students admire. Great way to review parts of speech, practice using thesaurus or synonym feature in word processing programs and incorporating word from class vocabulary lists into a poem about a family or friend, classmate or character from literary work students have read.

Anna J. Small Roseboro, a National Board Certified Teacher is a published author and poet but is primarily an educator with over forty years’ experience teaching English and Speech to students in middle school, high school and college in public, private, and parochial schools in five states.   A mentor for early career educators, Ms. Roseboro earned a B.A. in Speech Communications from Wayne State University and an M.A. in Curriculum Design from the University of California, San Diego.  Her newest published work is a series of books published by Rowman and Littlefield designed for pre-service teachers and for those teaching middle school for the first time. See those three books GETTING STARTED (2018) MORE ABOUT WRITING (2019) and NOT INTIMIDATING (2019) on her website http://teachingenglishlanguagearts.com/.