Playing with Poetry

April is National Poetry Month and that makes it the perfect time to play with words!  

Here are a few books we've used to guide our play:

A Kick in the Head- An Every Day Guide to Poetic Forms by Paul Janeczko

Where I Live by Eileen Spinelli

I am the Book by Lee Bennett Hopkins

Here are a few projects that we've used to enjoy playing with words:

1.  

SPINE POETRY

This was our first attempt at spine poetry and we had a blast.  In this free verse style poem, anything goes.  Simply gather a selection of books whose titles convey your message of choice and then stack them so their spines spell out your poem.  This one, by a 2nd grader, reads:

"What do you do with a tail like this

  The President is Stuck in the Bathtub

   Wackiest White House Pets

    Taking a Bath with the Dog and Other Things that Make Me Happy

      Puppies Count."

You can stack them up like this and take a picture, or write out the titles and illustrate your poem.  The possibilities are endless and you may just discover some books you can't wait to read as you hunt for the perfect title to form the next line of your spine poem!

2.  

Found, Push Pin Poetry

We let our imaginations run wild with these little poems!  First you'll need to cut cardboard squares to serve as the base for your poem art.  (You could also use cork board if it is available).  Then let kids cover their square with whatever you have on hand, we used paint and let it dry while we searched for words, but you could use paper or colored pencils or markers....The poem is created by finding words in magazines or old books, highlighting them by outlining them in a fun way, see the picture above, and then cutting them out and pinning them to your square (we used push pins but tacks would work too).  We finished our squares by attaching a ribbon so it could be hung as poetry art.  I sent each child home with extra pins and extra words they had chosen so they could "find" and pin a new poem as often as they wanted.  We had some kids write a couplet, some a list of facts, some a rhyming quote or lyric, and some who did true found poetry and used the words found on one page to create an original found poem.  I found that giving them lots of choice in how they would use the words made them crazy excited and they worked hard at finding words and using them to create poems for as long as I let them!

3.

Book Poetry, Narrative

This project was inspired by the I am the Book collection of poetry.  We so enjoyed reading the book and looking at the illustrations inspired by each poem.  When we finished enjoying the poetry I asked the kids to choose one type of poem to reflect their feelings about books or reading.  Most students chose to do a list of participles describing books, but this fifth grader wrote a narrative and added her own illustrations.  It was interesting to see the kinds of words kids used to describe reading or books and to watch them illustrate to add meaning.  This was a fun and free kind of activity that led to some great thinking and writing.  The above poem reads:

Books

Books, spinning, swiriling, running, flying, everywhere, anywhere, anytime

Seeing, singing, reading, writing, over and over again.

Dancing, the images dance, bubbling, bouncing, boiling over

all over the place, like frosting on a cake

and colors on a cupcake.

Yummy, nummy, intriguing, like a kite in the sky 

carrying you away to entertain your imagination.

Showing the way from boredom, books RESCUE!

It's not too late!  Pick a poem or a project and get busy playing with words today!