IT'S ABOUT TIME for BTS POETRY!

 

As you plan for the new school year, consider incorporating poetry into your daily lessons.  The potential for skills learned through poetry is nearly limitless.

Capitalize on the excitement of new school supplies to introduce this poem.  Then select from the Poetry Possibilities (lesson suggestions) the activities to employ.  This poem, for example, could be used to introduce/review adjectives and adverbs.  Challenge your learners to write an acrostic poem about their new pencils.  This poem is also great for studying punctuation.  Lots of possibilities here!

One of my favorite BTS activities is creating concrete poems about our new supplies.  These poems can quickly fill a blank bulletin board while celebrating your poets' efforts.

Use this poem to introduce similies.  Students can then write an acrostic poem about themselves that incorporates similies.  You'll learn a lot about your pupils.

Back to School Poetry Possibilities offers a variety of poems and a plethora of lessons.  Each poem has a custom designed teaching point about poetic elements and forms.  The Possibilities are tailor-made skills lessons, activities, and poetry writing prompts.  The range of reading levels makes this unit appropriate to both primary and intermediate level classes.  It also offers differentiated instruction to accommodate students reading above or below grade level.  AND, this week this poetry unit is discounted 20%.

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.

CHINESE NEW YEAR ACTIVITIES and RESOURCES

How do you celebrate the Chinese New Year? In my classroom, I use poetry to introduce the celebration. The following poem introduces some of the holiday traditions:

Chinese children will greet their parents and other adults by saying, "Gung Hay Fat Choy," which means wishing you great happiness and prosperity. Naturally, we greet the adults in our school with this phrase.

The dragon dance is often conducted in the streets during Chinese New Year. My students create a parade of their own using these templates:

We make a dragon for the parade, keeping in mind that the longer the dragon, the greater the luck it bestows.  To make the dragon's body, create an accordian fold. Use 2 strips of paper about 1.5" wide.  Choose different colors and make the strips as long as you like.  Begin by gluing the strips together. 

The head in these pictures is a template that can be colored or printed in color.

Of course I have a poem dedicated just to the Dragon Dance.

Along the way, I incorporate other learning. These activities are part of my Winter Poetry Possibilities unit. The possibilities provide a plethora of lessons from various disciplines.

GUNG HAY FAT CHOY!

 

It's About Time for M.L. King, Jr. Day!

It's about time, teachers, to get ready for MLK, Jr. Day! You may enjoy this FREE poetry resource. It comes with teaching possibilities and is best suited to intermediate students.

Enjoy!

POETRY - MY PASSION!

POETRY - MY PASSION!  

If you follow my blog, you know that I'm passionate about poetry.  I love writing instructional poetry and I love teaching WITH poetry.  Teaching WITH poetry does not mean specifically teaching "poetry," as in figurative language, iambic pentameter, sonnets, etc.  While I do teach those things when appropriate, I use poetry to teach reading skills, science, math, social studies, and a whole lot more.  To that end, I have a line of products called POETRY POSSIBILITIES.

I find it rewarding to take a poem and parse it for all the lessons hiding inside it.  Here's a sample to illustrate what POETRY POSSIBILITIES are all about --

This poem is from Poetry Possibilities for Animal Poems.

Are you skeptical about teaching math with poems?  Check out this poem from Back to School Poetry Possibilities and its potential math lessons:

Many of the possibilities are completely adaptable to distance learning.

POETRY POSSIBILITIES are well received by teachers.  

I'm confident you'll like them, too!

It's about time, teachers!

It's about time for a TPT Site Sale!

• Feb. 4 & 5
• Save 25% with promo code FEBSALE
• Everything in my store is on sale; even bundles! 
• My store is on sale through Feb. 7!!

It's about time to save on everything on your wish list.

It's about time to stock up on time-saving products that will make your life easier.

It's about time to check out all of the great, critical thinking products I love creating.  Examples:

    

It's about time to take advantage of this opportunity to grab gifted education resources based on my many years of teaching gifted/talented/enrichment.  Examples:

    

It's about time you discovered the Poetry Possibilities that reflect my passion for all things poetry and using poetry to teach myriad subject matter.  Examples:

    

It's about time you found the emergent readers that provide teaching practices based on my years in Reading Recovery (TM).  Examples:

    

It's about time you treated yourself to the materials that will preserve your precious time with family and friends.

Using Poetry in the Classroom -- Part 5

It's about time for Veterans' Day, teachers! Naturally, that means it's about time for a poem.  And, of course, some activities to go with it.

This poem is an example of free verse; poetry free of rhyme and meter restraints.  It gives a concise history of this holiday.

After sharing the poem with your class and engaging students in a discussion about the history, place copies of the poem in your literacy center.  Challenge your students to find words that are homophones, highlighting them on their copies.  Then ask them to list the words and their alternate spellings.

You might ask the children to add to the list with more homophones they know.

Extend the learning by reading Granddad Bud: A Veterans Day Story, by Sharon Ferry.  It's an engaging book for all elementary students and provides great information about Veterans' Day.

Ask your students to write their own poems about Veteran's Day.  Suggest they write haikus, traditional Japanese poetry.  The stipulations for haiku are that the children write 3 lines.  Lines 1 and 3 should have 5 syllables each, while line 2 should contain 7 syllables.  Haiku poetry need not rhyme.  This exercise will give you insight into how well your class understands the holiday.

This poem is from my unit, Fall Poetry Possibilities.  It has many more poems and their teaching possibililites ready for your classroom.

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