Continuing in our explorations of translation, my class has been playing around with Chinook Jargon. Chinook Jargon is the trade language of the Northwest, a pidgin of English, French, and several Salish languages. It was widely spoken through the 1800’s, and gave the English language words including “muckamuck” and “salt-chuck.” It has about 500 coreContinue reading “Chinook Jargon”
Category Archives: Poetry
Translation with Nine Year Olds
I’ve been doing poems using words in Spanish or French with my students for several years, and have been trying to figure out a way to do our own translations. They love working with words in other languages, but it’s always felt a little daunting to do a whole translation, given that I have rustyContinue reading “Translation with Nine Year Olds”
Sonnets: Shakespeare wrote ’em so why can’t we?
Sonnets are a staple of English-language poetry. They can also be intimidating to introduce to children, because of their density and formality and because lots of the best ones were written a long time ago. However, I’ve been teaching them — after a solid foundation in other poetry — for several years now, and whileContinue reading “Sonnets: Shakespeare wrote ’em so why can’t we?”
Math + Poems = Swagness
Today, in honor of April Fool’s Day, we pretended to do math instead of writing. We wrote a math poem, where each line had to have an equation but everything was words instead of numbers. It was so fun it felt like a game — might be a great writing assignment for a math-focused kid.Continue reading “Math + Poems = Swagness”
Frog Hollow School 