Tag Archives: National Poetry Month

Poetry Is… SOL25 Day 25

I introduce my students to poetry beginning in the first week of school. We study a poem each week, noticing what poets do and the wide variety of approaches that make a poem a poem.

Our school schedule consistently fits the beginning of National Poetry Month (April) into our spring break. In order to not miss one minute of this month that celebrates the wonder, fluidity, and flexibility of words, I have learned to launch full-force into poetry the week before our spring break starts.

Yesterday we read Daniel Finds a Poem by Mischa Archer, a lovely and accessible book for young children where the title character asks all the creatures in his neighborhood to define poetry and then ends up with a poem compiling their answers at the end. With Daniel’s story as inspiration, we grabbed our sketchbooks and headed out to our school garden in search of poetry.

We are so lucky to have a wonderful school garden, and at this point in the year it is bursting with life and growth. It was a perfect place to enjoy the outdoors, some sunshine, and collect ideas for poetry for the zines students would write today.

Today to reinforce the idea of seeking and finding poetry in the world around us, I read This is a Poem that Heals Fish by Jean-Pierre Simeon and Olivier Tallec. My students were immediately engaged by the endpapers–fish in the shape of the alphabet with the P, O, E, and M in a different color! “It says poem,” C pointed out. They were all in at that point. This book was more abstract and metaphorical than the one we read yesterday–a perfect “push” as my students took their ideas from their sketchbooks and turned them into Poetry Is… zines (tiny paper books folded from a single sheet of paper).

These first graders did not disappoint! Here’s the tiniest taste:

Poppies are balls of agreement inviting bees over for fun. Corn is popping up to the sun, sunbathing, letting sun beam against their back! Potatoes are as brown as chocolate in Halloween. Carrot are as snappy as twigs. Cabbage is as bumpy as dinosaur skin. Poetry is yellow sun listening to leaves’ hearts beating. (By B)

Poetry is an onion plant waiting to grow. Poetry is a grasshopper jumping with excitement. Poetry is a tree enjoying the rain. Poetry is the worms playing in the soil. Poetry is a sunflower in the rain of a watering can. Poetry is a song that has metaphors and similes and sometimes rhyming words. Poetry is love urging you to write and compare. (By S)

All those amazing words and poetic ideas written in a compact tiny zine. It is truly a delight to watch these young poets blossom…just like the plants in our garden. National Poetry Month, here we come!

Poetry Comics: SOL24 Day 26

4 Replies

Another book review? Is it even allowable to write three slices that double as book reviews?

But I simply couldn’t resist. I’ve been following Grant Snider for a while on Instagram/X and I am constantly inspired by his comic writing (for lack of a better term). Somehow he has a knack for simplifying complex ideas into 4 panels or 9 panels where the combination of images and words slices through and hits me right in the heart.

I preordered Poetry Comics, knowing that I needed to have this book not on my Kindle, not from the library, but right in my hands. Ironically, my school librarian got a copy last week and put it in my box a week before my preorder arrived today. I’ve been savoring each page, connecting both as an adult and as a teacher.

I know I will be having my students study a few of these poems and try their own hand at crafting their own poetry comic. There are so many great choices it’s making it hard for me to choose. Here’s one I am considering.

I can’t wait to see what my students will create as they explore poetry comics! How about you? Will you try to craft a poetry comic as we head into National Poetry Month?

Even if you don’t, I highly recommend Grant Snider’s Poetry Comics. There’s plenty to love in this deceptively simple volume.

Warming Up for Poetry Month: SOL23 Day 29

5 Replies

It’s hard to believe that National Poetry Month is right around the corner! The way our school calendar works, we typically miss the first week or so of April as we are on spring break. So…I’ve learned to get an early start!

The book, Daniel Finds a Poem by Misha Archer is a perfect way to get first graders thinking poetically. They love the way that Daniel learns about poetry from all the animals around the park–and crafts his poem from their remarks.

Then it was time for the students to start thinking about what poetry is. We started with the stem, Poetry is… As we began brainstorming ideas, we also considered how our senses might help us think beyond just things we can see. Students wrote, beginning their list of what poetry is. Today we returned to our writing, taking a look at where we started, considering the senses we hadn’t yet tapped into, and wrote for another ten minutes. Then we took out the highlighters. I asked students to pick their best (or favorite) three poetry is phrases and highlight them. Wow–there were some gems! Here is a small sampling…

Poetry is

the hugs that my mom gives me
moonlight skies with stars shimmering
the feel of hot water from the bathtub
the smell of salt in the sea when the waves hit the shore in the morning
the rustle of newborn blossoms coming out for spring
the bird tap dancing at the break of dawn

and…poetry is when you look at the sky to find your own dreams.

Oh…out of the minds and pencils of 6 and 7 year olds!

And of course, we had to do some art to create a display for our poetry. Tulips were our inspiration (see yesterday’s post). Using black oil pastel and liquid watercolor, we created vibrant tulip still life paintings.

So poetry month has been launched! How will you launch poetry month in your classroom? In your writing life?

Tulips and Poetry: SOL22 Day 29

11 Replies

As March comes to an end, National Poetry Month is right around the corner. To get a bit of a head start–especially since we begin our Spring Break next week–I decided we needed to immerse ourselves in some poetry this week.

Poetry is nothing new in our class. We study a poem each week and then illustrate it, creating an anthology of poems we’ve worked with during the school year. We’ve written some poems of our own here and there. But the time is right for a deeper dive.

Daniel Finds a Poem by Micha Archer is a perfect book to get started. The first graders loved that the poem Daniel wrote was a compilation of the answers from all the animals that answered Daniel’s question, “What is poetry?” And it set the perfect stage for our own Poetry Is… brainstorm. After a start yesterday, we took this idea further today, stretching out ideas and embellishing them with vivid description. Here’s a few examples:

Poetry is a glass of warm hot chocolate on a cold, snowy winter day.
Poetry is a grasshopper jumping and hopping and bouncing all around the fields.
Poetry is a coconut with the flavor inside and the outside is so hard and thick like a layer of armor.
Poetry is a slippery fish, as beautiful as a butterfly.
Poetry is the sound of my dad snoring.

And somehow, in my mind, poetry and flowers are a perfect pairing. I had purchased some tulips and daffodils from Trader Joes over the weekend, knowing I wanted students to have a close up look at these symbols of spring (that are not commonly found growing around here). Yesterday students used a black oil pastel on watercolor paper to do a directed drawing of tulips in a vase. Today, we used liquid watercolor to create vibrant paintings of these beautiful spring flowers. The results are stunning!

Watercolor paintings drying on the classroom floor.

I plan to matte them along with the “Poetry Is…” writing. And I think I may have each student contribute one line to create a class Poetry Is poem for a poster to hang on our door! After all, National Poetry Month is right around the corner!