Four Hallway Haiku

Sarah J. Donovan, PhD (s/her) on March 25, 2018

I could feel the fever spiking. And my blood was simmering.

It was the week before spring break, and the symptoms of cabin fever among the students were spreading. They’d submitted their final portfolios –letters to parents with hyperlinks to all their learning for the past ten weeks — and with each day one more classmate was absent (starting vacation early). Some students were staring off into space during reading time. Others were restless, even agitated when I continued with our routines. I was reacting differently to each instance of resistance. I think I was coming down with the fever, too, but we had to get through three more days, and how we did that was up to us.

After school, I was reading the portfolio-letters. In their conclusions, I asked students to tell me one word that captured their experience of the quarter and to comment on what they most enjoyed. Some of their words were brave, discovery, perseverance, and fun. The trend of what they most enjoyed was Friday storytime and publication days with comments and cookies. They enjoyed cookies, but they mostly enjoyed hearing one another’s writing.

I have never been known as the “fun” teacher, but I was glad the students thought class was fun. I wanted students to start spring break with those positive feelings not boredom, restlessness, or agitation. Heck, I wanted to go out on a high note.

We didn’t have time to write another paper, publish it, and share it, so I decided we’d write haiku. I figured we could publish, share, and eat cookies, and all would be right in the world. Still, I had to be clever about the process to keep the fevers down.

Hallway Haiku

The hallways of our school are filled with art (opportunity for discovery), so I created a gallery walk pre-writing experience for students. This would get students out of their seats and maybe notice (even appreciate) the beauty of our school. However, for this to work, I could not send 32 restless, agitated students into the hallways days before spring break, so I organized stations and sent shifts of eight students at a time to do the gallery walk.

Along the gallery walk, students stopped to observe different pieces (e.g., tree artwork, cell monster posters, a plaster installation, our living courtyard) and take notes using a prewriting sheet. After all the shifts had completed the gallery walk, we began crafting the poems, and then we did a quick peer conference.

To help us with the revision process, we watched this video about how to rethink the way we’ve been taught to write haiku:

The next day, students revised their poems and chose one to share open-mic style. Two students hosted the open mic, and we had a haiku fest with cookies to celebrate the end of our quarter and the beginning of spring break.

Check out our hallway haiku below, and let it inspire in you restFULness and calm.