Poetry Breakout Time

One of the activities in which literacy studies students participated during National Poetry Month was a poetry-themed breakout. Our breakout was a combination of materials from Second Nature Teaching from Teachers Pay Teachers, and items created specifically for DCG students.

Like our library orientation breakout (click the link to read about students' first literacy studies breakout), groups began with an introduction letter. This time, though, the letter was actually a group of limericks, in staying with the poetry theme! The first two limericks appear below:

Students had to locate poetry books on shelves, solve particular items in a poetry-themed crossword puzzle, use their grammar skills to earn codes, and evaluate the limericks for answers all to determine combinations to locks. A digital component accompanied the breakout as students had to scan QR codes and enter information in Google Forms.

Like other breakouts students have completed throughout the year, they often had to struggle, fail, and rethink their work to determine combinations. Collaboration, critical thinking, communication, and creativity all played a part in students' efforts!

Blackout Poetry & Book Spine Poetry

On May Day, how about a look back at April, National Poetry Month, when we celebrated by creating blackout poems and book spine poems. All of the seventh grade language arts classes passed through the library over three days to "write" poetry.

 Students also stacked library books into poems in a book spine activity. After students pulled books to use, poems began to emerge. Take a look below!

Celebrating National Poetry Month

As April is National Poetry Month, students in 7th grade language arts visited the library to "write" book spine poems and found poems. Students worked in pairs and individually to create poetry from fiction titles.

Just two days later, the same students returned to the library to "write" found poems. In this activity, students used pages from weeded fiction titles to create a poem. 

Celebrating National Poetry Month

Seventh grade language arts students have been into the library recently to celebrate poetry during National Poetry Month. They "wrote" poems during two different activities: book spine poetry and found poetry.

During our look at book spine poetry, students worked with partners to "write" poems using books mainly from the fiction collection. While the shelves looked "well loved" after the activity, it was definitely worth it!

Students came into the library later for another activity--found poetry. With two options for "writing," some students chose to extract words from a scene in an independent reading book, like this poem based on a scene from Divergent.

The second option students had to "write" a found poem was to choose only the words they wanted from a page from a weeded book. After looking at several examples, the creativity flowed!

Check out some of their work below:

Celebrating National Poetry Month with Book Spine Poetry

With book spine poetry all the rage--and a huge success with my elementary students--I thought it was time to get my middle schoolers involved. Mrs. Perkins's 7th grade LA kids came in as a small group to learn all about it; next week the whole class will be in to "write" their own poems with guidance from today's small groups.

Check out the students' poems--and see their work in progress--with the pictures below: