IT'S ABOUT TIME for POETRY MONTH

 April is National Poetry Month.  Prepare your classroom for it with these resources:

These 20 posters each describe a type of poetry.  A sample of that poetry form is also included.  Display the posters as anchor charts or compile them in a notebook as a reference for your poets.

All of the poems and the teaching possibilities in this unit pertain to spring weather, holidays, and activities.

This unit provides teaching points, skill lessons, and activities custom designed for each.  Animal Poems masterfully combines language arts with science.

This unit also combines poetry and science as your students learn about states of water, clouds, precipitation, and content vocabulary.

This poetry unit combines poetry and the history of westward expansion.

Take your primary students on an African Safari through poetry.

These poems and their teaching possibilities are all related to feet and footwear.

These task cards are applicable to virtually any poem you may be studying. Skills range from simple identification of high frequency words to homophones; punctuation to personification; and suffixes to cinquains.

EXPLORE NATIONAL POETRY MONTH!

 

April is National Poetry Month, so let's explore some poetry.  What better way to explore than on an African Safari?  Join me on this POETRY SAFARI...

Load your primary students onto the jeep and discover 9 poetic forms: couplets, triplets, alliteration, acrostic, shape poems, ode, collaborative, limerick, and number poems.

There is a map to guide you ...

... and assignment sheets.

This journey will also allow your explorers to learn more about Africa as they complete the poetry assignments.

See you on safari!

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Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

It's about time, teachers, for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day!

MLK, Jr. Day is Jan. 15.   Do you need resources for it?  Try this one; it's FREE!

This FREE poetry unit provides 3 poems about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Each of the poems in Poetry Possibilities -- Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Edition has a page of possibilities for teaching. The poetry possibilities are custom designed and include a teaching point related to poetry, as well as activities and skill lessons from multiple disciplines. Topics covered include:

POETIC DEVICES
• metaphors
• rhythm
• sensory detail
POETIC ELEMENTS
• meter
• iambic foot
CREATIVE WRITING
READING SKILLS
• accented syllables
• unaccented syllables
GRAMMAR
• capitalization
• punctuation
ENRICHMENT OPPORTUNITIES
RESEARCH TOPICS
ART PROJECTS
BOOK LINKS

These poems are copy ready and, thus, may be added to your students' poetry anthologies. The range of reading levels in these poems makes them appropriate for all intermediate classrooms. This unit is CCSS aligned. 

"The time is always right to do the right thing."
                                                            -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

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It's about time for Veterans' Day, teachers! 

That means it's about time for a poem. And, of course, some activities to go with it.

Here are some teaching possibilities:

This poem and the teaching possibilities are part of Poetry Possibilities: Fall Edition.  There are 25 additional poems.  Each poem is accompanied by a teaching point related to poetry, as well as activities, skill lessons, and poetry writing prompts. All of the activities are custom designed for that poem. Lessons include: 

• Elements of poetry (rhyme, internal rhyme, rhyme scheme, rhythm, figurative language, voice, imagery, form)
• Poetic form (haiku, tanka, acrostic poems, tercet poems, cinquain poetry, 1-2-3 poems, 5 senses poetry, list poems)
• Guided reading lessons (CAP, phonemes, rimes, fluency, expression, grammar)

• Book links
• History
• Math (graphing, patterns)
• Art (visual, performing)

Every poem is copy ready so that you may have your students bind them into an anthology of their own. 

These poems provide a range of reading levels appropriate to both primary and intermediate classrooms. Thus, you can accommodate students reading above or below grade level. 

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Texting Poetry

In this age of texting mania, engage your students in a safe "texting" activity that will produce some "phone-tastic" poetry. Challenge them to write Phone Number Poetry.  It's easy, fun, and will produce poetry with a new "ring" to it.

Have each student write his/her phone number vertically on a piece of paper.  Each digit represents the number of words to write in that line of the poem.  (If the phone number contains a zero, they should write 10 words on that line.) After selecting a topic, they can begin writing their free verse poem.

Google Doc

An alternate idea for this "texting" is to have the digits represent the number of syllables in each line.  For older, more capable students, challenge them to write lines of alliteration using 1 of the letters assigned to that number on the phone.  If, for example, one of the digits is a 2, an alliterative line could be:

Clever conversations

Or, a line for the digit 4 could be:

Giddy girls gabbing, giggling

The topic of these poems may be one you assign or the choice of the poet.  A fun, if obvious, topic is cell phones. With all the smart phones available today, students can expand their thoughts on phones to include games, web browsing, email, maps, photos, videos, yelp, ...

It's about time for National Poetry Month.  So call up this fun poetry activity.  You are sure to enjoy these "messages!"  

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Winter Poem Freebie

                                                                                                 

It’s snow time in the Midwest!  

To celebrate, here’s a free poem and possibilities for using it in the classroom.

                                             

It’s snow secret that I love poetry.  Hopefully, you will have a ball with this snow poem.

If you like this poem and its possibilities, you may wish to check out my product, Poetry Possibilities for Winter.

It is available on both TpT and TN.

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SIMILE POETRY

Simile Poetry is one of my favorite “beginning of the school year” activities. This type of poetry is a simple blend of acrostic poetry

and similes. 

Have each student write his/her name down the left side of a piece of paper.  Using each letter as the first letter in a phrase, s/he writes a series of similes that describe him/herself.

Simile poems are a great way to get to know your students, or at least gain some insight into their self-images.  A display of these poems is a big hit at the fall open house.  Keep these poems in your students’ portfolios.  Repeat the assignment at the end of the year and enjoy comparing the two.

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