We Are Kicking Off Poetry Month With Lots Of Fun!

This was posted on John Schu and I's blog Two Libraries One Voice today, too.  

Today is April 1st and the start of one of our favorite months.

It is National Poetry Month!

In April every year, the Academy of America Poets celebrates Poetry Month.

On the Poets.org site it states, "Inaugurated by the Academy of American Poets in 1996, National Poetry Month is now held every April, when publishers, booksellers, literary organizations, libraries, schools and poets around the country band together to celebrate poetry and its vital place in American culture. Thousands of businesses and non-profit organizations participate through readings, festivals, book displays, workshops, and other events." 

One of the BEST events that they promote is Poem In Your Pocket Day....this year being held of April 26th. On this day, everyone is encouraged to find a favorite poem or write a new poem and put it in your pocket.  

Last year, we celebrated Poetry Month and Poem In Your Pocket Day together for the first time.  You can see how we celebrated by watching this Animoto of the special day at Brook Forest and Van Meter Schools. Throughout the day, we shared poems and celebrated poetry.  It was a blast seeing everyone in our schools and friends around the world get involved in this day.

This year, our friend, Sarah Ducharme, a teacher librarian in Budapest created a Google Doc for all of us who wanted to connect on Poem In Your Pocket Day.  Thank you, Sarah. :) 

Today, we planned out our schedule and activities for Poetry Month.  

We worked in the Google Doc that we set up for Poetry Month a few weeks ago.  Through the chat feature and by writing in the document itself, we were able to plan some very FUN celebrations, projects and connections. 

We will be creating Spine Poetry again with our students.  We will turn the photos into a collaborative FlipBook that will be shared with our schools and friends.

Our first and second graders are going to create collaborative Little Bird Tales and...

Tikatok eBooks featuring poetry and illustrations they create.

We will also be using our iPads and iTouches to create poetry.  We will use apps like Visual Poet.

We found time to connect each day this week with different classes to celebrate the kick-off for poetry month.  During these connections we will discuss Poetry Month and Poem In Your Pocket Day, show the Animoto from last years celebration and tell our students how we are going to work together to create digital eBooks, poems and other art work.  

And of course....we will be sharing a little poetry with them too. 

This is going to be a wonderful month. 

We can't wait to hear you are going to celebrate National Poetry Month too!