Meet My Collaborator, Colby Sharp

So, I’ve introduced you to Ed Spicer, the awesome teacher who wrote the activities for What’s Inside? Poems to Explore the Park,? and to Marcie Flinchum Atkins, who wrote activities for Riddle-ku: Poems for Very Close Reading. I’ve been sharing poems from the third book in my 30 Painless Classroom Poems series, and I’d like you to meet Colby Sharp, who has created the activities for Fairy Tale Garage Sale.

Colby Sharp

Colby Sharp

Colby Sharp is a husband, dad, and a third grade teacher. He helps run Nerdy Book Club.

Visit his blog:
mrcolbysharp.com

Check out Nerdy Book Club:
nerdybookclub.wordpress.com/

Follow him on Twitter:
@ColbySharp??

Follow him on Instagram:
instagram.com/colbysharp

Follow him on Pinterest:
pinterest.com/colbysharp/

Addendum from Laura Purdie Salas: If you follow Colby Sharp on any kind of social media at all, you can’t help but notice his enthusiasm, his real passion, for books and teaching. One thing he does not really have a passion for, however, is poetry. When I asked if he might be interested in contributing activities, he wrote: ?I’d love to play along. Poetry REALLY stresses me out, so I may not be of much help, but I’m always up for trying!? I don’t know if creating these activities led him one step closer to being a poetry convert, but I hope so. I was really excited to have an educator who WASN?T already a poetry lover contribute to this 30 Painless Classroom Poems series.

Colby is exactly the kind of teacher I’m doing these books for’someone who deeply loves books, kids, and teaching, but who gets a panicky feeling, perhaps a deer in the headlights look, when you ask him to teach poetry. So I hope you’ll enjoy his activities for these poems?I sure did!

Here are just two of the activities Colby created for Fairy Tale Garage Sale!

• Have students draw an outline of the yard sale of a book character. Encourage them to think about what that character’s yard would look like and what items might be included in their yard sale.
• “Come Again Next Year” – Have students write a letter to next year’s version of themselves. Have them include goals, their favorite things to do, etc. Have students place their letter in an envelope and address it to themselves. Set a reminder in your calendar to mail the letters in exactly one year. You could also use an online tool like FutureMe to have students do this in email form.

Aren’t those great? Some activities relate to specific poems (like the second one above), while others relate to the fairy tale/garage sale theme. Colby came up with all sorts of cool ideas!

I’ll be sharing a few more poems from Fairy Tale Garage Sale this week. I hope if you like them, and you like the sample activities above, you’ll decide to give the whole book a try. It’s available for Kindle and in paperback–if you buy the paperback, you get the Kindle version free.