National Poetry Month

I wanted to create a post to describe what the students did in April for poetry month.  In addition, I wanted to share my Scoop.it account for Poetry Month.  At this link, you can find several resources that can be used to write poetry.

First of all, let me say that I don't just teach poetry in the month of April, but this is when it receives the most attention.  I like to encourage reading and writing poetry throughout the year, which would be completed during their free choice reading and/or writer's workshop time.  I can usually hook a standoffish reader/writer with poetry because of the shorter nature of the reading/writing.

My daughter's birth stopped me from promoting the use of tech for the students' projects, but I wanted students to construct a poetry project using various ineractive websites.  I was thinking of creating blog posts, Glog O' Poems, poem podcasts (using Audioboo, Voicethread, Photo Story 3, or Audacity), Little Bird Tales with multiple poems, or create a Prezi for your poems.  Here is a teacher's requirements for a poetry Glogster.  I still recommend and encourage students start to interact with some of these web tools.  If anyone creates something using these web-tools, I might have to reward the students in some way. 

Student books were created in the classroom and required that each student complete the following requirements:

• Write/publish at least 10 creative for the poetry book
• Organize your book's content with a table of contents
• Provide a book title, name, and illustrated cover
• Write a summary or provide reviews on the back cover of your book
• Create illustrations for each poem
• Include poetry techniques learned in class (i.e. similes, metaphors, alliteration, hyperbole, repetiton, onomatopoeia, etc.)
• Include several higher-level vocabulary words (aka "Wow Words")

The following picture is an example of a interesting type of poem called a Book Binding Poem, which uses the titles found on book bindings to write a poem.  Here is my example:

With the book titles, I was attempting to write...

Funny boy
Chronicles
21st Century Skills 
Into the Wild

So, even I am a poet and I hardly even know it.  Again, I wanted to share our project for National Poetry month.

Mr. Gibson
(AKA Hoosier Teacher)

P.S.  We won't have a Discovery Quest or April Book Report project due this month.