Hi, teachers! This is a gathering of blog posts I’ve written that contain samples of activities or enough detail about the writing process that they might be useful to you in creating your own poetry lessons. For instance, I’ve shared several detailed lesson plans of poetry activities from Young Authors Conferences I’ve taught at. Enjoy!
April 11, 2022 Today’s sticky note poem is the result of another exercise, called N+7 (read about it here). Again, I use it as a starting place. Not to write a poem but to give me a springboard into a poem. Below the image, you’ll see a stanza ... April 9, 2022 I love rocks, and they show up a lot in my poetry!
Here’s my drafting process.
Thanks for reading, and happy National Poetry Month! And if you ended up here by chance, fantastic! Here are a few links you might find helpful.
Intro to what I’m doing ... April 7, 2022 Tried an exercise with some poet friends where you take a poem and replace every noun with its opposite. And then you see if anything in that new nonsense poem sparks an idea for you. Here’s the draft I ended up with, followed by the ... March 16, 2022 My biggest hopes for We Belong are that it gets used to spark good discussions and to create community.
So I’ve created a template for you to use with your students to write a classroom or family poem. I used this template at the book launch ... February 2, 2022 Why not write an equation poem for someone you love for Valentine’s Day? These snappy poems are short enough to fit on a handmade card!
Just pick a person to make your valentine for.
my sister Patty
Brainstorm lists of specific things about your person.
loves:
funny movies
dark chocolate
cross-stitching
games
therapy dogs
wolves
describes ... March 3, 2021 I so love it when kids (or grown-ups) do their own writing inspired by something I wrote!
A virtual book club of 2nd graders at Spradley Elementary in Frisco, TX, read Lion of the Sky and wrote their own zoo-ku in response.
Aren’t those fabulous? Can you ... June 18, 2018 Wednesday, June 20, is World Refugee Day, and I wanted to share a poetry-writing activity I did with 3rd-8th graders in case you’re looking for a writing activity with one of your summer programs (or in years to come). Almost every year, I teach at ... May 16, 2016 Last month, I got to visit Hugo Elementary School in White Bear Lake, MN, at the invitation of Media Specialist Connie Stirling, whom I had run into at the Hubbs Children’s Literature Conference. I was so excited to visit the school and spend an entire ... February 1, 2016 Last Friday, I was part of a literacy event in Stewartville, MN, called Hot Reads for Cold Nights. Wow. There were 500 or so people there, and organizer Renita Irvin had so many things going on: book exchanges, food, storytellers, silent auctions, and a ton ... November 4, 2015 As a writer, nothing makes me feel better than knowing that my words inspired someone else to do something: to write, to think differently, to take some kind of action (or even just to relax, to laugh, or to learn). Last month, I got the ... June 3, 2015 One more day of wordplay poems here! Monday, I shared the lesson plan. Yesterday, I shared a gallery of poems. And today, here’s a gallery of the rest of the poems! Thank you, students!
Teachers, please note: Most of these are their notebook version, not copied ... June 2, 2015 Today and tomorrow, I’m sharing student poems from my sessions at Success Beyond the Classroom’s Young Authors Conference at Bethel University. I shared the process/lesson plan yesterday, and I’m excited to share student work here. Teachers, I know you’ll find some awesome poems here to ... June 1, 2015 Last week, I taught all week at Success Beyond the Classroom‘s Young Authors Conference in the Twin Cities in Minnesota. I love this event every year. It’s an opportunity for me to lead the same writing workshop 12 times in a row with 4th-8th graders, ... April 4, 2015 Hi, everyone! It’s Day 4, and thus Line 4, of the 2015 Progressive Poem, created and curated by Irene Latham.? I missed participating last year and am happy to be back.
OK, I confess I am a fan of short poems. And short lines. (My Ireland ... October 15, 2014 You guys know Michelle Heidenrich Barnes’ Ditty of the Month Challenge at Today’s Little Ditty, right? Where she features a guest, who issues a poetic challenge? This month she featured J. Patrick Lewis, who shared a poetic form he created, the zeno. You can read ... September 18, 2014 Happy Poetry Friday! I don’t often write poems or verses for specific people. Well, I do, occasionally, but I don’t give it to them–I’m too self-conscious to do that. I’ve written poems for/about both my daughters but don’t think I’ve ever shared them. However, inspired ... June 2, 2014 Last week,?I did?Young Authors Conferences all week with 4th-8th graders. I’ll be doing a poetry workshop I tried out in March, and the kids and I had lots of fun with it. The theme of the conference is making unforgettable characters, so we wrote mask ... April 29, 2014 Please forgive the double post today, but I wanted to share this poem while it was still Poetry Month. I signed up for Jone MacCulloch‘s Silver Star Poetry Project again this year, and I just got my beautiful postcard yesterday. What a burst of brightness ... June 5, 2012 I presented at a Young Authors Conference all last week, and I thought I’d share a brief version of my lesson plan with you.
First, here’s a less-than-1-minute slideshow:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUdCzxX0Wq0&w=560&h=315
The theme of the conference all week was “Writing with Muscle,” and my session was?”Poetry Powerlifters.” We worked ... June 6, 2011 Week before last, I spent Tuesday through Friday at Young Authors Conferences here in the Twin Cities. I’ve been doing this for four or five years now, and I always enjoy it. The 4th-8th graders are, in general, very smart, enthusiastic, and excited to be ... June 8, 2010 On Friday, I shared just a few of the cool poems that 4th-8th graders came up with in my Young Authors Conference workshops. A few people asked about the process, so I thought I’d share the outline of what we did. Each session was only 50 ... June 11, 2008 I’m sharing this not because it’s some stellar presentation, but because it’s always so helpful to me when people share the activities they do at school visits. I wouldn’t copy anything exactly, but it gives me good ideas and let’s me know what’s realistic.
At the ...NPM2022 Day 11: Travel Law #1
NPM2022 Day 9: Magic Rock
NPM2022 Day 7: The Sun Is Never a Spoon
A We Belong Poem Template for Classrooms
Make an Equation Poem Valentine
Ready to Write Some Zoo-Ku? #ClassroomConnections
A Compassionate Point of View in Poetry – World Refugee Day
Writing Things To Do If… Poems with 1st Graders at Hugo Elementary
Things To Do If… Student Poems
A Tree Can Be…, by Mrs. Vallarino’s 3rd-Grade Class
Wordplay Poems from the Young Authors Conference, Part 2
Wordplay Poems from the Young Authors Conference
Wordplay Poems in Your Classroom
2015 Progressive Poem: What’s My Line?
Meet the Zeno (a great poem form for classrooms)
Poetry Friday – A Daughter Can Be…
When Pencils Get Emotional [Writing a Mask Poem with Emotion]
Jone MacCulloch’s Silver Star Poetry Project
Powerlifting Poetry
Praising Everything at Young Authors Conferences
Lesson Plan for Emotion Poems
What I Did at the Young Authors Conference