Thursday, April 4, 2019

Poetry Pandemonium II -- The Poems

Happy Friday and Happy Poetry Month to All!

I hope you are enjoying some reading, writing and listening already this April. There are so many wonderful kidlit poetry celebrations. For a full list, see Jama Rattigan's post of 3/29.

For this week's Poetry Friday round-up visit Karen Edmisten. Thanks to her, we have a lovely collection of blog entries to peruse this weekend full of Poetry Month postings. Thank you, Karen!

Last week, I detailed the implementation of Poetry Pandemonium at my school. This project is a review of Language Arts concepts embedded in a brackets style poetry competition before state testing begins at the end of April. For these details, click here.

So far, Poetry Pandemonium is going swimmingly. Teachers have commented on how much they have enjoyed sharing poetry in homeroom with their students. However, an anonymous survey at the end of the project may produce some tweaking that needs to be done. This is the first year my school's Literacy Council has hosted the project.


This week I'm sharing poems from the project. If you have resources you'd like to share back--that would be super! I love great collaborations among friends.


Winning poems are highlighted in yellow



As you can see, there are poems from

Imperfect: poems about mistakes: an anthology for middle schoolers, by Tabatha Yeatts Lonske (History House 2018)

and, 

The Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations: Holiday Poems for the Whole Year in English and Spanish, by Janet Wong and Sylvia Vardell (Pomelo, 2015).

These are resources that I introduced to and reminded colleagues of. Both are available to staff in our professional collection. Teachers contributed poems from their various sources. And, I think the strength of Poetry Pandemonium is that it was created from contributions from staff members.

  As I mentioned last week, this entire project is heavily influence by NCTE
resource. https://www2.ncte.org/blog/2017/03/celebrate-march-madness-poetry/ 

As Poetry Pandemonium has grown on our score board (aka bulletin board) so has the level of visual WOW! My favorite were the butterfly decorations until I saw the boarder our Library Media Assistant made from recycled book pages. Isn't it cool? Definitely keepers -- our assistant and the border ;)
Follow @LibraryMiddle for daily deets on Poetry Pandemonium


Getting a response from @poetry4kids (Kenn Nesbitt) over his poem winning the Hyperbole contest was  extra fun this week!



9 comments:

  1. Poetry Pandemonium sounds awesome, Linda! What a great way to get kids excited about poetry!

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  2. Every bit is wonderful, Linda. I know you're working so hard on this & it sounds like the kids are having a great time. Yes, I love that border, very clever! Happy Poetry Pandemonium!

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  3. I love that you're doing this, and I'm positive that your students are having a blast. I would've had a fangirl moment over the Ken Nesbitt response :)

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  4. Fun to hear how things are going. I do love that recycled border!

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  5. What a huge undertaking and I would bet it's going to be a smash hit with students and teachers alike. I admire your energy and enthusiasm! How cool that Ken Nesbitt responded!

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  6. This is an excellent idea before state testing: to get students engaged in reading poetry and to get minds away from the stress of testing. What a treat to get a response from Ken Nesbitt.

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  7. Oh, this post makes me so happy! I love how much excitement it's generating and I especially love that, as you say, "the strength of Poetry Pandemonium is that it was created from contributions from staff members." Brilliant!

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  8. I'm so glad to hear how wonderfully this project has taken off! I shared it with my colleagues, and they immediately responded with excitement to try it. Thank you so much for bringing so many people and ideas together to promote the power of poetry!

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Friendly, positive comments and feedback are always welcome here. Please let me know I'm not just whistling in the dark!