A Booklet of Chain Poems

Over the course of two weeks in April we wrote and illustrated chain poems, which I learned about in the article "The Chain Poem, a Way of Breaking the Ice", by Ingrid Wendt. I began by writing "Quaker" at the top of a piece of newsprint and then asked each child to give me a word that the word Quaker  made them think of. Their words were meeting, George Fox, Catholic, pacificism, PJ, and hat. Then, I chose the word meeting from this list, wrote it at the middle of the top of a new piece of newsprint (in landscape orientation so that we'd have lots of room on each side of the word) and asked each student for a word that the word meeting made them think of. I wrote the words in a list under the word meeting. Their words were benches, window, synagogue, centering, and Quakerism. I asked if anyone had heard of a chain poem before. None had, but they were eager to share other types of poems they'd heard of before, so we talked about haiku and limericks for a bit. I then explained that we were going to turn this list into a six-line poem by writing a line of poetry around each word, that we didn't have to worry about rhyming, and that each word could be used as the beginning, middle, or end of its line. The children came up with ideas for the lines almost as quickly as I could write them down. Our first chain poem was this:

I am meeting with my creator today

Sitting on benches and silently conversing

When I look out the window

I can see the synagogue

I am centering

My Quakerism

My co-teacher Melanie and I were blown away! After this, the children were eager to try their own. Two children chose to work as a pair, and the rest worked alone. We handed out paper and pencils and  I suggested the word light as the starting point and the poems began to flow. Then they wanted to do one with peace as a starting point, so we did another round. At the end, those who wanted to read their poems aloud. I told the children that we'd illustrate the poems next week and put them together in a booklet. I asked each child whether they'd like to include one, both or neither of their poems in the booklet and everyone liked at least one that they'd written enough to want to have it included.

In the intervening week, I typed up each poem on a half-sheet of paper and made several copies of each so that children who hadn't been in class the week before, could illustrate someone else's poem if they preferred that to writing their own. I was surprised by the excitement the children showed in seeing the typed versions of their poems. I also brought a brief sheet of explanation of how to write a chain poem with some ideas for starting words, so that children who hadn't been there before could write a poem if they'd like. (Since one child the previous week had talked about how he liked to write limericks, I also included some information about limericks.) Most children chose to spend their time illustrating the poems that had already been written; one revised her poem from the previous week, and one who hadn't been there before was very eager to write her own. Over the course of the hour we got many beautifully illustrated versions of the poems and the children decided on a title for the booklet and made a cover.

I scanned the illustrated poems, Melanie worked with our newsletter committee to have poems published there, and we used Blurb to produce a copy of the booklet for each child and a few to keep in the meetinghouse. Both print and iBook versions are available on Blurb.