Choice Lit Topic: Poetry
We all need more poetry in our lives, and time spent with poems in classrooms is what many students carry away and cherish years after they’ve left our schools. Here are resources to help you bring more of the delights of poetry into your classroom and school.
Results
Along Saplines
Looking out at you, you skinny old tree, waving your rough arms in place like a tired warrior with nothing but a flurry of white between you and victory. Nothing's...
An Uncommon Place
A mulberry tree came down out back during this latest blizzard. I'm sorry to lose it, even though I won't miss the squashes of berries underfoot and the piling up...
Revising Titles Minilesson
In this minilesson from Franki Sibberson's grades 3 and 4 classroom, Franki takes students through the process of selecting and revising titles. She uses the poem "Confessions of a Reader"...
Life on the Edge
The nest of my poem is too loosely constructed to hold much hope, all shreds of thistledown and hay on the verge of a ledge under the drainpipe, sunblasted shortly...
Now is Our Season
Now is our season on the verge, a time of endings and beginnings. The seeds of autumn have fallen away, lost in a fault of memory, yet in the dark of...
If We Could Meet Again
If we could meet again as strangers, I would ask for more. Give me something sacred to see I would say, something bold to bless. Trick me into a patch ...
Cap’n George: Mentors Who Matter
Cap'n George sits on the porch rocking his stories back and forth like a first child up all night trying to grasp this new air that's been slapped into him,...
What Happens Next
Just when I despair for want of the phosphor- escence a bright idea could save, when stubborn riverlets refuse to budge, somehow sunlight, of its pure will, squeezes the bare-...
Using Poetry to Promote Reading Fluency
Poetry invites rereading. Because poems tend to be short and to the point, children enjoy poetry much more than we may think. Old Elm Speaks by Kristine O'Connell George is...
The Porch in August: Letting It Be
Chris told his fifth-grade students last week that when he is inside a good book he just cannot put it down. He is caught in the vortex of the story...
Messengers
I believe Ezra Pound when he said that "Literature is news that stays news," but we don't often get to hear our poets bring the news. When we do, we're...
The Rolling Pin: Looking into Things
Julian looks long at the slipper shell, one he has brought to school from his collection. When I kneel next to him at writing time he is turning it over...
Enhance Your Classroom Poetry Collection
Several years ago, I decided to build the poetry collection in the classroom. I only had a few poetry books, so I decided to make an effort to add great...
Ode to a Sweet Snowy Day for Two
[You can download this month's poem from Shirley, Ode to a Sweet Snowy Day for Two, by clicking on this link.] Recently I attended Poetry Week in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico....
Old Elm Speaks Conclusion: Connecting Poetry, Observation, and Reading
In this second installment of a three-part video series, Aimee Buckner shows how observation skills, poetry, and reading instruction come together with the mentor text Old Elm Speaks: Tree Poems...
Poets on Notebooks Quote Collection
Why a journal? Well, I like writing that spills over. I want to live as much as possible at the ends of my fingertips rather than, say, in the capillaries...
Old Elm Speaks: Connecting Poetry, Observation, and Reading
In this first installment of a three-part video series, Aimee Buckner shows how observation skills, poetry, and reading instruction come together with the mentor text Old Elm Speaks: Tree Poems...
Old Elm Speaks Day 2: Connecting Poetry, Observation, and Reading
In this second installment of a three-part video series, Aimee Buckner shows how observation skills, poetry, and reading instruction come together with the mentor text Old Elm Speaks: Tree Poems...
Poetry Friday! Poetry Books That Are Fun to Read Aloud
Early in my career, I taught at a school that had doughnuts and coffee for teachers each Friday in the teachers' lounge. It was a great way to start our...
Taking Wing: Cultivating Poetic Scientists Through Cross-Curricular Inquiry
In the modern primary classroom, the literacy block is being extended to all content areas (math, social studies, and science). Increasingly, there is more room for integrated learning. Recently, I...
Haiku Writing
Writing workshop had been humming along all year. We were listening to lots of mentor texts. We were drafting stories. Some students had folders bursting at the seams with drafts,...
