Poetry Quizizz

This week marks the end of our National Poetry Month. We learned about a lot of different types of poetry throughout the month. To put it to the test, I created a Poetry Review on Quizizz.

I just discovered Quizizz a couple of months ago and when I tried it for the first time for President’s Day, my students fell in love with it. I had told them then, that I would try to find another way to use it in the library. This was my perfect opportunity. They’ve enjoyed it just as much this week as they did the first time.

With Kindergarten and First Grade, we used colored cards to represent their answers for true or false since it’s more difficult for them to use the computers and read the questions by themselves. It worked really well. The rest of the grade levels were able to easily answer the questions on their own. I can’t wait to find another way to use Quizizz in the library!

Poetry and Poem in Your Pocket

This post is a little late again. This past week we continued working on poetry for National Poetry Month. Each grade level had a different kind of poetry that they worked on.

Kindergarten did Paper Sack Poetry. They had to look in their sacks, without anyone seeing what they had inside. Then they had to describe the animal Beanie Baby so that the others could try to guess what kind of animal it was.

First Grade did what’s called a Fold-It Poem. Each class member contributes to the poem by starting their line of the poem with the last word of the line of the person before them. It made for some very interesting poems!

Second Grade used a website called Word Mover by Read Write Think. It allows them to manipulate what looks like magnetic word tiles to create poems. They loved how easy it was to click and drag the words around. They could also alter the font, color and size of the text as well as change the background. 

Third Grade wrote poems on green sticky notes to place on our Poetree. We have a tree made out of cardboard that just sits around in our Learning Commons and typically only gets used during the Christmas holidays, so this was a way to make good use of it.

Fourth Grade used another website from Read Write Think called Theme Poem. It is basically creating a poem within a shape, also known as a concrete poem. They loved being able to choose their “theme” or object.

Fifth Grade did Blackout Poetry. I had several different pages from different books that the students could choose from. Then they blacked out all of the words on the page, except for the ones they kept to create their poems. This was a little difficult to do, but some of them had great success!

Thursday of this week was also Poem in Your Pocket Day.  I had a lot of students that came up to me to show their poem and share it with me. I also had teachers tell me how much they loved this idea and how excited their students got about finding or writing a poem. I wasn’t able to get any pictures of the students’ poems, but here is a favorite of mine from childhood that carried in my pocket that day.

National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month. According to the Academy of American Poets, National Poetry Month is the largest literary celebration in the world, marking poetry’s important place in our culture and our lives.

I’m really excited to get to try some new fun activities that I think the students will like. We’re going to have a Poetree display, Poem in Your Pocket Day, blackout poetry, magnetic poetry and maybe some sidewalk chalk poetry.

This week I read the book A Poem in Your Pocket by Margaret McNamara, to help the students to get a better understanding of what Poem in Your Pocket Day is about. It was a great way to talk about not thinking too much about your poem and trying to make it perfect. You have to just write what you feel or think.

Some exciting news for next week is that it is National Library Week. I’m hoping to tie some of our poetry activities in with that as well. April is definitely a busy month!

Holiday: Easter

Well, another holiday has rolled around and this time it’s Easter.  I love Easter because it’s spring time and the promise of new life is all around us.  That was actually the message of the book that I read to First Grade this week.  In Looking for Easter by Dori Chaconas, Little Bunny keeps trying to find Easter by getting a basket and filling it with grass and berries. He ends up giving his beloved basket to Robin for a nest and is delighted when he finds out that his basket is the home for Robin’s new hatchlings.

For Kindergarten, I read Here Comes the Easter Cat by Deborah Underwood.  The illustrations in this book are wonderful.  You can really get a sense of what Cat is thinking just by his facial expressions and body language. The students really seemed to enjoy this funny book.

Finally, for Second Grade, I read Betty Bunny Loves Easter by Michael Kaplan. In this story, Betty Bunny realizes that her brothers and sister have been helping her throughout the years to find all of the eggs during the Easter egg hunt.  Now that she’s older, she wants to find them on her own.  Even though she only finds three eggs, those three eggs are more meaningful to Betty Bunny because she found them on her own. This is a sign that Betty Bunny is maturing and becoming more responsible and that doing your own work has its own rewards.

With STAAR testing this week, these were the perfect, light-hearted books to read!