It's Been a Long Time...

Poetry Month


I know that some of you have wondered where I have been, and some of you have emailed to see if I was alright; thank you.
Like I have said before, I have undiagnosed OCD. I have to have everything as close to perfect as possible or I lay awake fretting about it. What has kept me busy this past week and a half has been perfecting my poetry unit. Well, we are done. The students blew me away with how much they learned and how well they produced. We really had a powerful, productive poetry unit of study (that I designed during my maternity leave, so how's that for OCD).

Here's how our month went:

• Students learned eight poetic forms and seven poetic devices, and wrote poems with elegance and imagery.

• These budding poets selected published poetry that spoke to them, analyzed the poetry, and talked eloquently about why they like them.
  

• They shared their poetry by creating an interactive poetry bulletin board and posting poems around the school building.



• The first eight students who memorized the poem "Do Not Quit" received a framed copy of the poem.
  

Inspired by the Poster for National Poetry Month, they participated in a free verse project. They took lines from poems and created a visual representation of the written word in the form of a poster.

They rated the entries and the winning poster will be used as the official School Poetry Month poster next year.






On Poem in a Pocket Day they brought poems to share and they rotated from classroom to classroom partaking in poetry center activities in reading, writing, math,Spanish, science and social studies.













Students created a book of poetry that consists of eighteen of their original poems and six published poems that they love.





And today we wrapped their books of poetry so that they can give them to their mothers for Mother's Day.

All 51 of them!

It was a lot of Fun, but I am overjoyed to be back!