Poetry Month

I was at a loss as to what to do with K-2 during poetry month this year.  Luckily, the librarians in my district are so willing to share ideas.  Here is what I ended up doing with them.

Kinder:  "A Rainbow is..."  from The Bubbly Blonde Teacher blog.  I read My Many Colored Days by Dr. Seuss and then the kinders filled out the rainbow poem.

Of course, we had the standard answers... red as an apple, blue as water.  But we had some pretty creative ones also... purple as a plum, orange as a sunset, green as a lizard.  And I always love when they ask how to spell orange and I say it is right there on your paper and they say, "No, the orange that you eat".  They are amazed that the color and the food are spelled the same :)

1st Grade:  "Ouch" Poem from the First Grade W.O.W. blog.  I read about 6 of my favorite poems from Shel Silverstein's Where the Sidewalk Ends.  And then read the "Band-Aid" and "Sick" poems. We brainstormed a list of ways we can get hurt and then the wrote their poems.  I found some Minion Band-aids at the Dollar Store and gave those to the kids when they finished their poem.  

I love that this one started to rhyme and then gave up.

2nd Grade:  Shape Poems on the ipad using  Theme Poem app and Tagul website.

And we finished off the month participating in Poem in Your Pocket Day today.  

Technology Tuesday: Shape Poems

I have always loved Shape Poems but found it so difficult to form the words in the correct shape.  I started looking for an app that might do it for me and came up with something close.

With 2nd grade this week, I read them some shape poems from Come to My Party by Heidi Roemer.

We talked about how these poems rhymed, but not all poems do.  We talked about how poems describe things and can be about any topic and then I had them open the Read, Write Think Theme Poem app on the iPads.  

This app has different themes to choose from.  We picked Nature poems.  Students wrote a poem about the sun, flowers, rain, trees, moon, sun, leaves or fish.  Then before we saved it, we copied the words of the poem using the select all and then copy feature.

We then opened the website Tagul.  

WARNING: This website requires a login.  I used my library google account, but I went in ahead of time and on each iPad logged in and created a shortcut on the home screen of the iPad to make it easy for the 2nd graders during the lesson.  There are also a bunch of different features on this website, so I could suggest playing around with it yourself before jumping in and doing it with a class.

We created a new cloud and imported our words that we had copied using the paste feature,  Then click VISUALIZE and wal-ah our words were in the shape of a... cloud.  We then looked at the different shapes available on the website and picked one that went with out poem.  Tap visualize again and then poof... our words were inside a shape that matched the poem. 

  

       

  

You'll notice the words in the colored shape poems are not in order of the poem but we were still excited about what we had done!   

Poetry Stations

I just love it when I offer a lesson in the library and when it's over, the teachers ask, "You'll have this for us again next year, right?"  This happened multiple times last week after 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th grade teachers brought their students in for some poetry centers that my colleague, Natalie Watts  and I created.

Both of us are hosting Poetry Alive and we wanted to promote some of the poems they would be performing.  Instead of just reading them to the kids, we came up with about 10 centers that would introduce the poems to the students and require them to complete various activities as they rotated around.  

Here are a few examples of our centers...  After reading "Ode to Family Photographs" by Gary Soto, students looked at some pictures that I had saved of families together.  The directions were to find a picture that reminds them of a time with their family and write a poem about it.  The students came up with some very clever poems.

At another center, students read the poem, "Be Glad Your Nose is on Your Face" by Jack Prelutsky.  After reading the poem, they had to illustrate in DoodleBuddy on the iPad either a place described in the poem or a place on their body where they would not want their nose.  

Not all stations were technology based.  At one stations, students read the poem, "The Pig" by Roald Dahl.  Then they used highlighters to find text evidence answering certain questions.  For example, highlight with green the line in the poem that tells how the pig solved the problem.  Adding the highlighter made this an engaging activity for the students.

Yesterday, we had our Poetry Alive performance and it was great to see the recognition in the students' faces when one of the poems from our stations was performed.

Friday "Wrap" Up

This is a short week for schools here in San Antonio due to our Fiesta celebration.  We are off today for the huge Battle of Flowers Parade downtown.  Besides giving STAAR for 3 days - blech!  We actually did get some poetry stations done with 4th grade for our upcoming visit from Poetry Alive.  I also moderated a twitter chat for my district librarians about things they brought back from TLA. And I participated in our district chat about education where each question (and some answers) were introduced with memes.  You can read about that chat on @Terrieichholz blog post .

My wraps this week are in honor of Fiesta time in San Antonio.... Lotus , the June Hostess Exclusive and Skinny Pink (I am not usually a "pink girl", but after having it on last week I LOVE it!

I have nothing to do with the first grade Fiesta parade that goes on at our school, but I just love how the whole school dresses up and lines the hallways.

And the floats that the 1st graders make are AMAZING!!  Check these out (sorry some are blurry, they were moving fast).

Some floats are carried

Some are on wheels

Of course there are plenty of Spurs floats!

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And my favorite... The Texas Longhorns!

Poetry Month

April is poetry month and for the first time in a long time I've got stuff planned all month!  I've been sharing some poems from some of my favorite poetry books.

I love the poems in  "Good Dog" becuase they are told from the point of view of different breeds... The Chihuahua poem shows hyper, yet tough personality.  The Maltese is a beautiful bride with a vow poem from her owner to love and cherish her. And my favorite is the Pomeranian who has just gone to the groomer and is admonishing his owner for embarrasing him by making him look like a "powder puff". 

Alan Katz visited my school 3 years ago and is just as funny in person as his Silly Dilly songs.  My favorite in this book is "Stinky, Stinky Diaper Change" sung to the toon of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star". 

School Fever has great poems about the librarian who conquers a mouse in the library by reading to him, the cafeteria food, and my favorite from this one is a boy who professes his love for his teacher and since he can't tell her he loves her, drives her crazy instead.

And Judy Sierra take Mother Goose favorites and turns them into monster rhymes in this hilarious book.

We are also having Poetry Alive on May 4th and to get ready for their visit, another librarian and I created some centers based on the poems they might perform. My first class of 2nd graders visted today and had a great time writing a list poem, drawing the characters from "Don't Let Your Cat Wear an Apron" with DoodleBuddy on the iPad and using highlihters to find words that describe senses in "The Cat on My Lap". 

I have different centers for 3rd-5th grade that will start next week.

At the end of the month we are going to be connecting with other classes via skype to share poetry.  If you are interested in participating in that here is the link to the google doc.  We are also celebrating "Poem in My Pocket" Day on April 30. 

What are you doing to celebrate poetry month?