My students have had a great time collaboratively publishing poetry with some third grade students. Here are some of the (maybe lesser known) books they enjoyed reading as mentor texts in addition to the ones they read digitally on our LiveBinder.
This year, our school hosted author and poet Diane Z. Shore. She is an amazing speaker who really gets the students enthusiastic about writing. Her interactive presentation teaches the young writers about the power of figurative language in writing. Many of her poems have been published in Highlights magazine or turned into picture books for younger students. These two books are anthologies from many different poets, as well as her. You can tell from the titles why kids love these poems.
As a self-contained teacher who teaches all content areas, I bring literature into all content areas. My students love the writing of Greg Tang. We read many of his books in our math lessons. My students were so inspired by Math-terpieces, that they created their own digital version for their collaborative writing partners.
Another fun math poetry/riddle book that my students enjoy is Riddle-iculous Math by Joan Holub. Two of my students were so inspired by this book, that they designed an entire lesson (that actually took two class periods) of math riddles to help review some of the math standards that we had already explored earlier in the year.
These are our current favorites, but we are always looking for more inspiration. Do your students have a favorite poem, poet or poetry book? I'd love to learn some new titles to share with my learners.
