A Pocketful of Poetry for Poetry Month

Keep A Poem In Your Pocket

By Beatrice Schenk de Regniers

Keep a poem in your pocket

And a picture in your head

And you'll never feel lonely

At night when you're in bed.

The little poem will sing to you

The little picture bring to you

A dozen dreams to dance to you

At night when you're in bed.

So - -

Keep a picture in your pocket

And a poem in your head

And you'll never feel lonely

At night when you're in bed.

I really enjoy using this poem to introduce poetry month (April).  It's a nice tool for explaining to young poets how a poem is able to "paint a picture in your mind."  Poems are so special because of their short nature.  The poet must pay careful thought to EACH and EVERY word in a poem in order to achieve the precise feelings and imagery sought.  We are talking pretty heavy stuff here!  Can you tell I have been reading Lucy Calkins?

To celebrate poetry month, I start by making sure each of my young readers (for those of you that don't know, I teach a combination of first and second graders in an innovation school) have a book of poems in their browsing boxes.  They love this.  Among my favorites are Jack Prelutsky and Shel Sliverstein, of course.  I let them "book shop" for their own poems even though some may be a little bit off with their reading levels.  Shhhhhhhhhhhhh!

I also celebrate an addition to our Morning Meeting routine.  I place a poem of the day on my morning message easel.  We share it after we read the morning message and solve my riddle/joke of the day.  After we choral read the poem, I ask my students what do they think, feel or notice.  This question is vague and open ended, but I do this on purpose.  I want my young poets to discuss what the poem means to them, NOT to me.

In addition to these two new routines, I put out my Pocketful of Poetry center and resources.  It includes 18 task cards good for any poem.  Students simply select a poem and respond to the task card on the stationary provided.  Tasks include searching for rhyme, figurative language and themes.  They also include writing a critique, discussing the poem's setting, visualizing and discussing feelings.  

I also use my cards for sharing poems to change up the way we read poems with partners, in a small group, during guided reading, etc.  We experiment with choral singing, cumulative choral reading, line-a-child reading, call and response reading, dialogue reading, impromptu reading and refrain reading.  All of these cards (with what they mean) are available as part of my Pocketful of Poetry resource.

For my second graders, or advanced firsties, they take some time to look at a poem in a more technical manner using my Pocketful of Poetry Student Glossary.  They hunt through a poem and answer the questions provided with help of the glossary (written in child friendly language).  The items include rhyming pattern, rhythm, author's purpose, speaker, descriptive language, figures of speech, summaries, audience and critiquing.  This part of my poetry study can be done over, and over again.  Once I model the steps whole class, it's a great "What to Do When You Are Done" activity.

I did want to share some pics of my putting together this product over the weekend.  I made it last year, but am finally implementing it this year in my classroom.  I'm a busy guy; things take time you know.  

Here I went printing away.  This took awhile as there are a lot of pages in this resource.  

                           

                         

Next up was laminating and cutting, laminating and cutting--repeat.  I have my own personal laminator at home and another personal laminator at school.  I was tired of transporting them back and forth.  I'm not the only one with two, right?

I had a mini-3D display board that a colleague gave to me last year (Thank you, Judith).  She knew I would find something to do with it and, and she wasn't joking.  I had some extra chevron borders from September, so I glue-gunned them to make a fun border that matches the heading banner pocket.  

I used Velcro patches to attach the pockets to the display.  I attached the task cards this way so that the poets could grab a pocket and a poem, take both to their seats and get right to work.  When done, they would just place the pocket back on the display.  I numbered the board so they would match the numbered pocket back up appropriately.

                            

And this, folks, is what you call my classroom-bound, finished product. 

Stop on by my TpT store for a detailed description of this product by clicking HERE.  Happy poetry month!  What do you do to celebrate?

Mr. Giso's Class Celebrates Halloween with Pumpkin Globes

The first grade in my school (all three classes) was fortunate to have pumpkins for each child donated this year.  WOW!  I had always wanted to make pumpkin globes, so this was my chance.  It was definitely a project!  I was very careful and knew it would be important to test each step ahead of time.  Also, my two grade one team members and I put our heads together to come up with a variety of solutions when we ran into trouble with this project.  The result is these fool proof directions for you to enjoy.  They look fantastic, so save this blog post for next season.  

First the pumpkins got cleaned with a bleach wipe.  After they dried, we used a small sponge to dab on acrylic blue paint.  Water based paint will not stick to the pumpkin.  We even did the bottoms of the pumpkins and lay them back right on the newspaper.  I placed the paint in cleaned meat trays for easy disposal.  Also, each desk was covered with a sheet of newspaper. 

Here are the pumpkins set out to dry on my kidney table.  The children thought they looked like Smurfs... so true.  After they were fully dried, I sprayed the pumpkins with a clear, acrylic spray.  Make sure it is low odor!  Also, I used the gloss can because I wanted the pumpkins to shine.  I let the pumpkins dry and resprayed them two more times (see below).  For about 20 pumpkins, I bought two cans and had plenty left over.

In the meantime, I conducted a few geography mini-lessons.  My goal was to introduce my students to the following points.
•Maps and globes show our planet in different ways
•Our planet has more water than land
•There are 7 main continents
•There are 4 main oceans
•Being a cartographer (map and globe maker) means being as accurate as possible. 
I used these catchy poems by Evan-Moor.  They came from an old big book of poems.  I tried to find the item, but I don't think it's made anymore.

Next, students colored a set of labels for the continents green.  You see them in the photograph above.  I printed these out from a geography blackline I had.  I printed them on full page labels made by Avery.  The box said they worked in copiers.  After that, the students cut out the labels and stuck them on.  We did this together, label by label.  I had plenty of maps and blow up globes around.  I also used Google Earth on my ENO board.  If you have not checked that out yet, let me say WOW!  I was able to spin the globe around and zoom in and out.  Click HERE to download this.

Before the labels were put on, I had a helpful parent cut out leaves out of foam board and write each child's name on them for me.  I punched a hole in the leaf and tied it on with two shades of green curly ribbon to look like vines.

Here is the finished project.  I love these!

Simply click HERE to printout a free set of the globe poems and directions for making this terrific project.  Happy Haunting to All!

Introducing Poetry Power!

I have just finished adding a new item to my store. It's an excellent resource for you upper elementary teachers to use when teaching poetry.  It includes a handy glossary of poetry terms with an aligning blank template.  Just take any poem and have your young poets interpret it based upon the template.  This tool can be used whole class, for homework, as an assessment or in a literacy center.  It can be used over and over again.  Just keep a tub of laminated poems and blank templates and you are ready to go for September.  As a bonus, you will also get seven fun and interactive ways to share poetry to promote both fluency and an appreciation of the spoken word.  Click here to spice up your poetry unit this coming year!