Small Reads for Brighters Days
It’s so fun to see how Irene Latham’s Progressive Poem ended up. I meant to keep up and read it every single day, but I fell short. I checked in periodically, but it’s just fabulous to read the entire thing, start to finish–head on over to Irene’s blog if you haven’t seen it yet. What […]
Oh, my goodness. My writers’ group, the Wordsmiths, met yesterday for our holiday gathering. The laughing! The food! The good advice! Hope you are all enjoying some holiday gatherings with your teacher colleagues and/or writing friends, too! Please, Mr. Panda is a quirky little book! To be honest, I thought Mr. Panda was a bit […]
OK, I know a beach book and poem isn’t exactly seasonal, but…a five-minute imaginary trip to the beach might be just what you long for, now that we’re knee deep into December! I used to be in a crit group with author Joanne Linden, and I was SO thrilled when Ben & Zip, a charming […]
Happy Hannukah to everyone celebrating! This week, I’m going to be sharing poetryactions. Quick poems written in reaction to picture books. I hope you like them! My house feels a little like The Nut House right now, mostly because of holiday stuff and book stuff. It’s all good and cheerful! But a little bit crazy:>)
Have you guys seen what ELA consultant Carol Varsalona does each season at Beyond LiteracyLink? She puts out a call for photopoems, gathers them all up, and then creates a gallery online of everyone’s photopoems! I know she puts a ton of time into each one of these. Her Summer Splashings gallery went live last […]
Pets Add Life, a non-profit awareness campaign about the joys of pets, is sponsoring a poetry contest for 3rd-8th graders. This is the eighth year for the contest, and teachers, if your student wins for his or her grade level, you win a $1,000 grant for either pet-related education or a classroom pet. Cool! I […]
Hi, teachers! Everybody’s back to school by now, right? I’ve been on an erratic blog schedule this summer, but now things will settle down. My daughter Maddie is settled in in Scotland, where she’ll spend the next 2-3 years doing social justice work. It is both hard and comforting to have the house quiet again […]
Happy Poetry Friday! (Wondering what Poetry Friday is? Click here.) A couple of weeks ago, I took my niece Lily (remember our collaboration of poetry and art here?) for a game/art night. We do this every once in a while. She’s very artistic. We go to a coffee shop and doodle or do rock art […]
Happy Poetry Friday! (Wondering what Poetry Friday is? Click here.) I learned about Padlets recently when Amy Ludwig VanDerwater created a Favorite Poem Padlet and shared it at The Poem Farm. So. Cool. I can see tons of ways that teachers could (and probably already are) using this tool with their students. Anybody can add […]
Happy Poetry Friday! (Wondering what Poetry Friday is? Click here.) With all the excitement over a lion or other big cat roaming a Milwaukee neighborhood, I thought “My Cat,” by Valerie Worth, would be appropriate for today. It’s from the book Pug & Other Animal Poems (see it on Indiebound or Amazon). The spread in […]
