National Poetry Month

Despite some of the trials and tribulations associated with the classroom I am in right now, I am happy (and exhausted) to report that this week ended on a high note.  I got a wonderful phone call from the principal at my own children's school who really lifted my spirits.  As the craziness of the job hunt continues it is always nice to have someone lift your spirits and put you in a positive mind frame once again.

In class, we finished up our poetry centres and I am so please with the work the kids did.  We celebrated National Poetry Month in April, and I introduced the class to several different styles of poetry and authors.  Although the original plan had just been to read poems with them on a daily basis for the month, at their request we began impromptu poetry readings by students.  They also asked if we could try writing poems, so I developed a set of centres for them to do just that.  They had six centres to rotate through and for the most part they all did their tasks and seemed to enjoy them.  Several of them really responded to what we were doing and have continued creating poems while at home.  It's also nice to see the boys in class really getting involved in the writings of such poets as Shel Silverstein (Evereything On It) and Patricia McLachlan (Once I Ate A Pie).

Poems are such a great way to engage readers that are struggling a little bit with chapter books.  The minimal text seems much more manageable and approachable, and once the boys realized the "icky" nature of some of Shel Silverstein's work they really took to it.  I think the (sometimes) graphic nature of the illustrations make a difference.

The activity sheets have been listed as a free download on and can be obtained through this link: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/National-Poetry-Month-Center-Activities.

My favourite centre was the one that asked students to create the illustrations to go with Shel Silverstein's poem The Gletcher, show above.  They used watercolour paper and experimented with the effects they could get on it.  The images turned out great and have generated alot of comments from other teachers passing them on the bulletin board in the hallway.

Although these were originally designed for a grade 3 classroom, I think adaptations could easily be made for other Early Years classrooms as well.  You may note that there are only cards for 5 centres....our sixth centre was to go online to the Scholastic Poetry Engine website that allowed students to create 4 different forms of poetry.  You can navigate to that website through this link http://teacher.scholastic.com/writewit/poetry/poetry_engine.htm.

Have fun!