A Snow Day Poem

Having a snow day today, I decided to try an exercise from my padlet. I decided to pick page 151 of Kate Messner’s book 59 Reasons to Write. I call it a Phone Number Poem.It’s a poetry warmup in her Chapter 9 – Poetry. The directions say to pick a theme (I picked things I’m doing on my snow day) and then write your phone number down the length of the page. Each number represents the number of words to add per line and 0 equals any number you choose. Then write a poem!

MY PHONE NUMBER POEM on a SNOWY Day in March!

7-   March 14 – Pi Day and Snow Day!

0 –  Random, repeating number celebrated with March snowstorm

3-   Unexpected rest day

3-   Unexpected breathe day

0-  Happily finishing three time-sucking tasks

7-  Completing taxes easily and scored sizable refund

6-  Starting to grade writing published pieces

6-  Happily finished reading book club novel

8-  Returned to grade writing pieces, least favorite task

WHY?

9-  For me, any words written should earn high scores

Yet, specific feedback is suggested so back to using rubric to grade writing.

 

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My Process: After picking my theme, I randomly, without thinking of word count per line, wrote these ideas:

Snow Day!
So quiet, except for the noise made as the wind blows the snow off the limbs
And the crunch of the neighbor’s snow shovel clearing his walkway
Unexpected day of rest
Unexpected time to catch my breath
Finished a book
Completed my taxes and am getting a sizable refund
Grading writing papers I’d been avoiding
Hate giving writing grades because to me, any words on a blank page is a high score
Yet specific feedback is suggested

Then using the numbers of my phone number to guide the word count by line, I began to form my poem. It definitely helped to have 2 zeros!! I also liked having 2 threes next to each other which I used as a little repetition. I cheated a little at the end but that’s the great thing about poetry. You can’t really do it wrong!! I found this to be a fun way to write! You might like to try it, too!!