Poetry Notebooks

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Home : 2007 : July : 10

Poetry Notebooks
By HailGail

I love using my poetry notebooks. I most often use poems that support the theme I'm teaching. If we are in the farm unit, I will type out (or cut and paste from websites) poems like Take me out to the Barnyard and Lots of
Animals Come From Eggs. I pass them out one at a time and read, mark them up, dance them, rotate reading lines, echo read them etc. Then the kids illustrate each poem and number the page. I have them 3 hole punched and they add them to the back of their 3 ring binder.

I send the Poetry Notebook home as homework to read with families each Friday.

I also got a resource

from Scholastic that has sight word poems. the children write in the sight word on blanks to complete a poem. Those worked really well too.

If you have a theme in mind, like farm for example, many teacher's class websites will have a theme section and will list poems that they use for that theme.

The best recommendation I could give for the notebooks is from a girl who will be a 4th grade next year. Sara cried because the pages were getting worn from her 1st grade poetry notebook! Mom told me about this and helped an older sister arrange to have the notebook hard bound as a Christmas give for Sara. I was honored to write a dedication page. Just yesterday I was working out and the mom told me that when Sara rearranged her room, she set up a reading nook and placed her hardbound poetry notebook on the table by her comfy chair. WOW

Poetry notebooks can fill in spare minutes during a transition time. I've had the kiddos read poems with their grandparents during grandparent day and we use some of the chants from early in the year as "line up" calls after recess.