Love That Class: Poetry Inspired by Love That Dog (Middles Quartz)
This fall the Middles read Love That Dog by Sharon Creech. This was my first time reading the book and I got the rare opportunity to be a teacher who observes the book being taught. This means I got to experience Lit class in the Middles, like a Middle! Kim taught my group and her passion for reading, poetry, and teaching filled the room during every class.
The book is written in verse and the narrator, a young boy, often writes poems inspired by, or in the same style as, other poems. The Middles too wrote poems inspired by the poems we learned about in the book. As I was participating in our Lit group, I also got the chance to write poetry. Some days I felt inspired and wrote poetry easily. Some days the format or style of the poems we were writing left me staring at a blank page, feeling empty. We often shared our poetry at the end of class, racing against the clock to see how many poems we could listen to before we had to transition. I got to experience the emotional rollercoaster of anticipation, fear, frustration, and joy as I waited to see if my name would be picked to share.
In Writing, the Middles worked on poetry as well. They made final drafts of their favorite poems, editing and rewriting, then decorating and signing the final paper. Those poems can be checked out on the bulletin boards outside both Middles classrooms!
Below are the poems I wrote, inspired by Middles Quartz and the poetry in Love That Dog by Sharon Creech.
The Black Mallet by Courtney Allen
Inspired by William Carlos Williams
so much depends
upon
a black mallet
layered with
fingerprints
tucked under
a silver chime
Love that Class by Courtney Allen
Inspired by Walter Dean Myers
Love that class,
like a beaver loves to dam
I said love that class
like a beaver loves to dam
Love to play at Morning Meeting
love to go on hikes, sayin’
“Let's see how many Middles we can fit on this log?”
They run and play, so happy
big builders too
I said they run and play, so happy
big builders too
They build homes for their foster pets,
Hot glue guns keep ideas flowing.
They got long trails to run,
before the year is gone
I said they got long trails to run
before the year is gone
They will be kind and caring students,
passionate until the year is done.
