Writing Rhyming Riddles like Guess Again!

Today I had a class visit from a T/K class from McKinley Elementary School. I knew it would have to be a very quick visit, because it would just be a part of their city center field trip. Fortunately, I had one of my favorite picture books on hand, Guess Again! by Mac Barnett and illustrated by Adam Rex.

Each spread of the book shows a picture that appears to be an animal, and despite a lot of hints in the rhyming riddle, it turns out to be a person--usually in a very odd and funny-looking position! I love Mac Barnett's writing style. Combined with Adam Rex's masterful illustrations, the book engages kids in thinking about rhymes and piecing clues together to solve a riddle.

The kids were great about guessing each animal that they were being led to guess, following the picture cues and the rhyme cues. (I'm thinking they would do a great job with the Listener Limerick Challenge on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me!) And by the end, just when the kids are starting to get wise to the joke, the joke is once again turned around on them! To be honest, this might be a book you share with a kid who is particularly patient. There's something almost snarky about the way this book NEVER rewards you for guessing the obvious! 

After reading the book, I pulled out my big writing pad, on which I had a few prompts and blank lines written out.

I asked the kids to name an animal. The first child I called on said "Elephant" -- unfortunately, I don't know any good rhymes with "elephant" (though if you can think of any, please leave some in the comments!!!). So I had to call on someone else, and she said "Giraffe."  "Okay!" I said. "I can work with that one!"

We wrote out a few words that rhyme with giraffe (at least, the last syllable). Then we decided it would be a boy, and I asked the kids to start telling me what they know about giraffes. The first kid I called on for this section gave me a sentence about laughing, so I decided to make "Laugh" our special rhyming word. I put the word "laugh" in the box, and then wrote a draft sentence with the word "laugh" at the end.

Once we had a few other sentences about giraffes, we were ready to fill out our riddle. We decided that the end of the riddle would of course not be "Giraffe" -- like in Guess Again, we ended with a different person. Kids wanted a monkey, so we landed on Mr. Monkey, a favorite children's book character of mine.

Then I decided to cut a few extraneous words--editing is part of writing!

If you'd like to try out this activity, and use easy-to-print handouts to lead a group of kids to create a whole book full of these silly riddles, check out my book, 36 Workshops to Get Kids Writing. And if you haven't already got Guess Again! by Mac Barnett and Adam Rex, buy it! It's a great one to have on hand for storytimes with kindergartners and up. 

Poetry Creation Stations Recap and Templates

Sometimes I'll be reading a post about an elaborate or complicated library program and wonder, "Gee, how did he/she manage to have all those things going on at the same time?" So today I'm going to do a recap of my Poetry Creation Stations program last week in our Kids' Writing Workshop, and start with how I set up the room.

We had four tables set up with the four different activities: Paint Chip Poetry, Reverse Poetry, Haikubes and Blackout Bookmarks.

Near each table, I put up a poster with instructions for what to do:

I created template handouts for the kids sitting at the Paint Chip Poetry and Reverse Poetry tables:

The kids had so much fun! Cleanup took a while, but I would definitely do this program again. The games and activities inspired a lot of great images from the kids. One child wrote a reverse poem about killing in self-defense:

Another wrote a reverse poem about telling the truth:

There was a Paint Chip Poetry poem about boundaries being a challenge "like a seedling" that has not ceased to grow:

Kids got a lot of great imagery from the games Haikubes and Paint Chip Poetry, including "red velvet tears" and "a pool of simple riches:

They had a harder time with blackout poetry. Some thought you were just supposed to find interesting words and others had trouble making their lines coherent. That's always been a challenging style for tweens and may be more ideal for teens. But they had fun doing it. I really liked this kid's poem:

Visit http://pasadena-library.net/kids/2018/poetry-month-creation-stations-kids-writing-workshop to see more photos and videos of kids reading their poems!

Poetry Creation Stations

This Friday, I'll be trying something a little different for my obligatory National Poetry Month session of our Kids' Writing Workshop. I purchased a few cool items that I want to share with the kids:

Haikubes

These are cubes or dice that have a variety of words you can choose from to make a haiku. The game is that you are supposed to roll a red cube that will give you a prompt, but I might leave it more open-ended for the kids. I liked exploring what words were available to me and tweaking them until I felt I had made a satisfactory haiku.

moonlight dripping, shines
her precious fire, licks the
surface of your heart

Paint Chip Poetry

This works even more like a game: first, each player draws twelve paint chips from the deck, and then draws a prompt card. Then you use as many of those paint chips as you would like to make a poem that responds to the prompt.

Blackout Bookmarks

In a twist on blackout poetry, we will be trimming our blackout poetry and laminating them to make them into bookmarks. The bookmarks are larger than standard bookmarks, but still a great size for using with even a small paperback book.

When I prep this for the kids, I grab a few of my favorite middle grade novels and photocopy a few pages from each. I look for pages with a lot of dense paragraphs and rich diction. I always try to encourage kids to scan the page and simply circle a few words that jump out at them. Just make connections, and you don't have to find a relevant word or phrase on every line.

Once they've done their circling in pencil, and tweaked it until they feel they'll have a strong poem, they are ready for the black markers!

Here's my sample. I was so jazzed to find a page that had lots of references to books, stories, and even a library! (This was page 394 from Marvels by Brian Selznick.)

Kids will be moving from one station to the next. I don't have a room with tables to work with tomorrow but we'll use clip boards and try to make it comfortable. I hope the kids have as much fun with this stuff as I did!