Reflection

Young Minds Waiting To be filled; Another day comes And a stranger stands in the front.

New Walls, New smells. Suddenly, Here come //my// students; My calling has found me at last.

Long Drive Each day. Now I know Why I have done it- They are each an inspiration.

I Will Teach A Lesson On  Bullying at school. Hope I get it right the first time.

The poems above are called Fibonacci poems, a relatively new style of poetry that mixes math and poetry to form a uniquely shaped stanza. Similar to Haiku, Fib poems have a specific sequence that must be followed, which matches the Fibonacci sequence of 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, and so on. In the poems I wrote here, the sequence is followed according to syllables in each line, but the poems can also be written according to how many words are in each line. Generally speaking, Fib poems tend to stay around 6 lines long since the sequence gets quite large very quickly. The sequence is created by taking a number, adding it to the previous number to create a new number, and then adding that number to its previous number, and so on. For example, 0+1=1, 1+1=2, 2+1=3, 3+2=5, 5+3=8, etc.

The reason I chose this style of poetry is because my class at school has used these recently and I was unfamiliar with this form. The content of some of these poems was pretty interesting, particularly for a group of 6th graders. I thought I would practice a few here and post the results while giving you guys a sense of my first week in the field. If you are doing a writing assignment which includes poetry, consider introducing this style. Though more restrictive than most other types of poetry, at least in terms of sequence, it can be lots of fun to see how the students work around the limitations.