How to Celebrate Poem in Your Pocket Day
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Educators:
- 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.
- As a school-wide initiative, join the Poetry Society of America
- Create a collection of school-wide poems around a particular theme.
- 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.
- Visit Poets.org to find your favorite poem.
- 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:
- Concrete poem – the poem is shaped like what you are writing about
- Object Poem – become an object and write about your life as a raindrop, blade of grass, tooth
- Found Poem – using your favorite book; find words and create a poem using those words
- List Poem – Using an object, experience or feeling as inspiration brainstorm a list
- 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 this site.
- Write a poem about your favorite song.
- Find a song that speaks to your favorite poem.
- Make inkblot designs and write a haiku about what you see.
- Make a bookmark of your favorite poem and exchange it with your classmates.
Finding Volunteers for Poem in Your Pocket Day
Invite a business leader, your local city council member, parent association member, or a member of the community to read your class a poem.
See the Poetry Resources Web Page for recommended web sites and collections.
Poetry Readings
Students in middle and high school may want to participate in the FIRST TUESDAYS Open Readings at the Jackson Heights Poetry Festival. Visit the website for more information.