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.

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?