Poem Written with Carson Middle School Sixth-Graders

Today I video conferenced with Carson Middle School's wonderful and creative sixth-graders. We talked about Ridiculous Poetry (writing funny poems), and how to make mundane activities (like walking) into interesting, humorous poetry ideas through exaggeration. We also discussed what makes things funny. Their responses included:

Randomness
Humor
Weird Animals
Made-up words

Finally, we put our learning into practice with an activity that exaggerated a real-life event/activity we dreaded. When asked for examples of dreaded activities, one student said, "Walking." When I asked, "Oh, like walking the dog," he responded matter-of-factly, "No, just walking in general."

Here's the poem we wrote together:

Walking is so difficult,

It’s really very hard,

Your legs hurt so bad,

they might fall off in the yard.

There’s always a chance

That you’ll step on a stick

Get it lodged in your shoe,

And get permanently sick;

Walking is slow, unbearably slow,

It takes so much time out of my day,

It makes me so tired that right now

I just want to hit the hay.