Poetry-palooza and lots of links!

We have been poetry crazy in our classroom the past couple of weeks.  I love focusing on poetry at this time of first grade because I feel like that the children are really READY to be poets!

I taught acrostic poems first (after reading poem after poem after poem) and we wrote a class acrostic poem about tadpoles (another thing that we are crazy about lately). We got a little bit of publicity from my friend Amy VanDerwater of The Poem Farm (she mentioned us on her Facebook page) and got some comments from some published authors!  Visit my classroom blog, Mrs. Faas' First Grade to see our now famous poem.

SIDEBAR----- This was a great way to show my first-grade bloggers the concept of a world-wide audience.  The fact that published authors can look at OUR poem means that we need to make sure that it is our BEST work.

The next lesson that occurred in my classroom was a fantastic lesson about the rhythm and sound of poetry.  We used Regie Routman's Teaching Kindergartners to Love Writing Poetry.  There is a book for each grade and if you have not read them, I suggest it.  I had used this when I taught kindergarten but the lesson works perfectly for first graders too.

Linda (AKA tech goddess) and I have taught this lesson a few times with my class and I wanted to make sure she got to do it one more time before she retires (don't tell her but I think that I am going to keep inviting her back to teach this lesson every year).  This year she brought Ranger Bear with her because we are participating in Sylvia Rosenthal Tolisano's Teddy Bear Project. 

Linda loves Ranger Bear. Can't you tell? 

Ranger Bear had to sit quietly while we were learning!

Linda started the lesson by showing the kids a copy of a poem written by a kindergartner.  It was a poem about a dead bee. The title of the poem is Bumble.

 The kids them got to see what "Bumble" looked like after it was "published".

 Then Linda wanted the children to listen to the rhythm of the poem.  She brought her little wooden toad to tap the rhythm of Bumble.

She had the kids close their eyes so that they could hear and feel the beat of the poem.  The great part of this was that my class had just done a beat and rhythm lesson in music class so this was all very familiar to them! 

Closing our eyes helped us concentrate on the poem's beat.

We wrote a class "bumble poem" about our Ranger Bear. Read it below.

Rangers

Ranger Bear's our mascot.

Ranger Bear's our mascot.

Ranger Bear's our mascot.

Rangers.

The kids went coo-coo crazy for writing these poems.  Here are a few examples of our rough drafts!

Cereal is yummy

Ice cream is delicious.

Robots can do anything.
Colin actually wrote 4 poems, 2 on the front and 2 on the back.

I am in the process of publishing the poems for them and will share when they are done. I think that I may do a Photostory so they can read them too! 

Bee the Change~