This year I purchased a magnetic poetry set for my classroom. I set aside a corner of the white board thinking it would be a fun thing for students to do -make sentences and poems in between their assignments, during homeroom, etc.
Some magnetic poetry sets have themes but this one, which I purchased at a yardsale, seemed to be pretty general. I scanned for any blatantly inappropriate words and then let them have at it.
Quickly I developed a secret little corner of the board where the “bad words” were banished. Some were obvious. “Blow, Butt, and Breast,” quickly made their way to the corner. What I didn’t anticipate was the students’ diligence and creativity in finding ways to make ordinary words dirty.
The bad word list grew longer:
Blow
Butt
Breast
Sausage
Kiss
Hole
Sweat
Slam
Meat
Rocket
Brown
All these words are innocuous enough on their own, but put together they say things like “Blow my brown meat rocket.”
The words that are left are pretty much rated G. However, every once in a while they come up with something truly unique such as yesterday’s contribution.
“I remember tall wild monkeys tongue fiddling him.”
I left it up there. After all, it’s poetry.
Ideas In Things 