Tuesday, April 17, 2012

A Few of Our Favorite Poetry Books

Since April is National Poetry Month, I thought I would do a short post on some of my current students' favorite poetry books. Last week, I hosted a Link Party where everyone could add their favorite poetry resources, lessons, blogs, or projects.There were a total of 46 links added.

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.

Saturday, April 7, 2012

Celebrating National Poetry Month

In celebration of April being National Poetry Month, I thought I would host a Linky Party. One of my most popular blog posts is What's in Your Writing Toolbelt? where I shared our 10 favorite publishing tools. I know how much we love learning something new that we can use in our own classrooms to support our students' learning. The most powerful way that we can learn is from one another. A Link Party is a great way we can share what we love with others in our PLN. Please share links to your favorite poetry website, resources, lessons, blogs or publishing tools that we can use to celebrate National Poetry Month with our learners.