How to Celebrate Poem in Your Pocket Day

Staff Members:

· Start the day with a read-aloud of a poem on the school PA system.

· Each class can begin their reading workshop, writing workshop or shared reading with a poem.

· Encourage all school staff to have a poem in their pockets. Find opportunities to show students the poems.

· Share favorite poems with your classes.

· Invite classes to read poems to each other throughout the day.

· Classes can create a collection of books of poetry and place it in a prominent place in the classroom.

· Have students send poems like people send valentines.

· Visit Pro Teacher Archive for a lesson entitled Poet-tree by Susan S. Students write their poems on teacher-prepared leaves and attach them to a teacher-made tree. http://www.proteacher.org/a/40057_Poet-tree.html

· As a school-wide initiative, join the Poetry Society of America
http://www.poetrysociety.org/psa-membership.php.

· Create a cadre of school-wide poems around a theme, possibly in support of the 2008 Presidential elections: I AM AMERICA.

· Have students choose a metaphor or simile to describe their feelings about Poetry. Have them write a poem using these feelings.

· Visit the READ WRITE THINK website for detailed lessons and activities supporting Poem In Your Pocket Day at http://www.readwritethink.org/calendar/calendar_day.asp?id=720 .

· Visit Poets.org to find your favorite poem at http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/406.

· Organize a poetry contest and select students as judges. Include teachers and administrators as contestants.

Students:

· Try writing a different kind of poem – one that the students have never written before:

o Concrete poem – the poem is shaped like what you are writing about

o Object Poem – become an object and write about your life as a raindrop, blade of grass, tooth

o Found Poem – using your favorite book; find words and create a poem using those words

o List Poem – Using an object, experience or feeling as inspiration brainstorm a list

o Sensory Poem – Using an object or experience think of all the sensory feelings associated with it and write a poem

· Write poems with specific literacy devices in mind, such as alliteration

· Write an ‘apology poem’ for something you did that you are not really sorry about, in the literary style of William Carlos Williams.

· Become something else – a drop of water, icicle, blade of grass –

and write a poem.

· Write a group poem. Each person in the group writes a line and passes it on to the next person. The entire poem is not read aloud until all lines have been added.

· Give instructions for something to do in poetic form.

· Find your favorite book or story and select specific words to write a ‘found poem.’

· Write a poem that uses lots of similes and metaphors.

· For older students, visit www.pbs.org/wnet/foolingwithwords.

· Write a poem about your favorite song.

· Find a song that speaks to your favorite poem.

· For cell phone users, text a poem to family, friends, or classmates.

· Make inkblot designs and write a haiku about what you see.

· Make a bookmark of your favorite poem and exchange it with your classmates.