Poetic Journeying

Thursdays are one of my favorite days at ALEC, I like to call them "Free Lesson Days". On these days I try to incorporate a creative lesson for the students to explore and potentially pursue outside of our learning center. This recent Thursday we explored the art of Cinquain poetry. Most of the students haven't heard of this style of stanza poetry, but a lot of students were already familiar with the concept of poetry. Some of our younger students cited Maya Angelou as a poet that they enjoy, and that was an awesome and surprising experience (personally, I wanted to high five their parents). 

So, some of you may be wondering "What's a Cinquain?". Think of it as a longer relative of a Japanese Haiku. The Cinquain was created by Adelaide Crapsey, a native of Brooklyn, New York. While a haiku is a poem is only 3 lines, a Cinquain is 5 lines and the syllable structure of (2, 4, 6, 8, 2).

Below is a photo of a work sheet that was created for the class: 

Some of the students were hesitant to give poetry a shot, but one student really jumped into it and did a great job with hers. Below is an example from one of our students, Kiyanah:

I'm proud that our Brashear Kids are always open to new things and that the seeds of an open mind are planted by their awesome parents and harvested by their community.