The CWP classes at CS 111Q are deep into the writing and revision portion of their residency with Ms. Hunter-Gordon’s 1st grade science class. The students have been studying animals and learning about how their shapes and abilities have allowed these varied creatures to survive in different habitats throughout the natural world. Inspired by the lives and diversity of global wildlife, they are writing poems comparing their own bodies and communities to those of the animal kingdom. Using their new poetic tools, such as simile and sensory details, the first graders brainstormed as a group through discussion and physical embodiment of imagery and their ideas (pictured above) to create a Community Poem that describes their city as a great urban and natural habitat, full of adventure and surprising sights! They will continue to expand and revise this language as they near the culmination of our residency later this spring.
Wildlife/Citylife: Our Animal Kingdom of Queens
What do we hear? What do we see?
We fly underground
Go into the dark
We see light from the trains – light from below and light from above
The subway is like a submarine
Descending in the ocean
The train cars, connected together, are like an aquarium underground!
People are like fish peering out with tiny little eyes, arms like fins swimming
Puffy coats of many colors.
The taxi-fish is yellow and black
The whole world is water that they use to fish for cars.
Dinosaurs, skeletons
The city is like the zoo.
What kind of animal are you?
I am a frog, bouncing on the Big Apple,
jumping and hopping from building to building.
I’m a monkey swinging from buildings,
I am energy swimming through the phone wires and zooming about.
I’m a little blue bird up in the sky that flies,
When you need a rest, you land on your nest.
You can’t live in the nest, unless you build it.
My nest is full of family with little babies
My bed is a carriage with a horse.
You can build a home in the sky!
