Listen to this Apostrophe - Teaching in a Mask

Smiling and Flying

by Amy LV

Click the arrow to hear me read this poem to you.

Students - Apostrophes are often overused, placed next to every final 's'.  And today, I decided to let the apostrophe speak for itself (if you keep reading, you'll see that I've done this before) to straighten us out.  It's interesting to write mask poems, poems in the voices of animals or objects or even punctuation marks.  I like to imagine this tiny apostrophe shaking her finger and her head, reminding us of how to place her properly in a patch of letters.

Poems can teach us things and still make us smile a little.  What might you teach in a bit of a funny way?  What do you know about that could speak in its own voice, possibly even correcting us humans?

Today's poem is written in quatrains with lines 2 and 4 in each stanza rhyming.  Soon I will write a poem with lines 1 and 3 rhyming as well.

Teachers - If you are looking for great resources to help you teach about punctuation and editing, allow me to share two of my favorite books by Jeff Anderson: EVERYDAY EDITING and MECHANICALLY INCLINED.  These books have taught me so much, about usage and also about ways to make such instruction interesting and inquiry based.

To read more poems about punctuation here at The Poem Farm, visit Inky Flyers, : (Colon Poem), ' (Another Apostrophe Poem).

This week I am particularly grateful to Catherine Johnson for her charming and tons-of-fun painting of my dogs Sage and Cali...with me!  Catherine is painting a series of portraits of writers and dogs, so far including Margarita Engle, Charles Ghigna, and me.  I love her warm and expressive style, and Sage and Cali were very happy too...  

Amy, Sage (R), and Cali (L)

Portrait by Catherine Johnson

You can find Betsy Hubbard and her open notebooks at my other blog, Sharing Our Notebooks.  Enjoy your peek, and please enter the giveaway by leaving a comment (by October 25).

Today's Poetry Friday roundup is at Merely Day by Day with Cathy Mere and a lucky quarter. Everyone is welcome to visit, read the poems, and share your own poetry joys.

Happy Poetry Friday!

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: - MyPoWriYe #134

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(Colon Convention Begins )

Lately I have been thinking about colons.  Yesterday, it struck me that 'colon'  has the same name and spelling as one of our body parts!  This is surely fodder for a later poem, but today's poem is simply one which explains usage.  Sometimes poems do teach us facts within their rhythms and meters.  Indeed, poetry can make learning playful.

For more playfulness around grammar and mechanics, check out illiterate businesses, where Maria highlights all kinds of incorrect usage in signage.  You can even submit your own photographs or ask her to proofread a sign (5 words) that you plan to hang.  If you love this sort of thing, she links to other such websites as well.

One of my favorite books to help children understand mechanics, a book which makes this topic fascinating, is Jeff Anderson's EVERYDAY EDITING.  Throughout my reading of this book, I found myself whispering under my breath, "How could I have been an English major and not have learned this?"

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On Tuesday, npr ran a piece about a new book by Jeff Beck and Benjamin D. Herson, THE GREAT TYPO HUNT.  These two men traveled the country for 2 1/2 months searching for and correcting typos.  Result?  They found 437 typos and corrected more than half.

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Sometimes I find extra apostrophes on bulletin boards and stuff them into my pockets.  Do you commit random acts of editing?

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(Colon Convention Ends )

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