Goodbye Summer Reading! Hello School Time!
My cape is tucked away and our library super hero readers are almost off to school!
Laura Purdie Salas’s poem captures the summer reading theme of “Every Hero Has a Story” with imagination and books just as our super readers return to class.
SuperReaders
Her cape is sewn from favorite pages
He battles bullies, beasts, and crooks
Their weapon is another world–
the world they choose–
inside of books
—Laura Purdie Salas, all rights reserved
I picture students just like Salas’s poem with flying capes made out of book pages, backpacks filled with school supplies and lunches ready to eat.
School supplies ready! photo by Paige Bentley-Flannery
Let’s start off the school year with some poetry noise. From Messing Around on the Monkey Bars: and Other School Poems for Two Voices by Betsty Franco to Shout!: Little Poems that Roar by Brod Bagert. Sharing school poems is the perfect way to start the school year out.
Favorite school poetry books created on Riffle.
School Poetry Activities:
- Listen to Amy Ludwig VanDerwater’s poem, “New School New Year.” After record your own. Start out with the same word, “School.” Have everyone say it together, “SCHOOL!” Then go around the classroom and have the whole classroom share one word. Maybe it’s their favorite subject in school, maybe it’s what school smells like or maybe it’s a favorite time like recess. Go around the classroom having each student share one word then again faster and louder. End the poem with everyone saying the word “school” together.
- Create a School Poetry Display with your favorite school poems and school supplies. (If you have a school poetry display already created please share in the comments below.)
- Attach a long piece of butcher paper in the shape of pencil on the back of a classroom or library door. Invite students throughout the day to write what the pencil might say if it could talk. Then read the poem, “Things To Do If You are a Pencil” by Elaine Magilano.
- Write a school bus concrete poem or shape poem-Draw a HUGE school bus, add school bus noises and things students might say on the way to school.
- Write a separate poem on “How are you getting to school?” Read “The Very First Day of School” by Deborah Ruddell. Have the students use their imagination and create their own vehicle or way to get to school. Examples: Flying chair, jumping shoes, rainbow wings…
- Find an unusual object in the classroom and write a concrete poem. Stuffed hedgehog, cuckoo clock on the wall, pink velvet chair—what unusual object do you see in the classroom? Describe it! Use butcher paper, crayons, pencils, markers and make it BIG or use colorful sticky notes and make a tiny concrete poem. Display them around the room.
- Write a list poem about what the desk, chair or chalk board (smart board) are saying when children are in the room. One word after the other-Ouch! Thud! Write another poem about the same object but when the classroom is empty. What do they when everyone has gone home?
- Read “On Menu for School Today” by Rebecca Kai Doltish then write a quiet and LOUD poem about a pencil sharper and create new sounds! Thud! Clank! The first word is in lower case and is quiet and then the second word is in all caps and is LOUD. Continue with one quiet word and then one loud word.
- Act out “Kids Rule” by Brod Bagert. Everyone up! Tell everyone, we are going to do three things (hold up three fingers) and we are going to do those three things three times. The three things are Run, Chew and Read! (act out) Practice the three things. Run three times while saying run, run, run. Pretend to eat your lunch while saying chew, chew, chew. Hold up your hands like a book and read, read, read. At the end of the poem, have everyone shout out together, “Kids Learn!” “Kids Rule!” Ready?
Explore more school poems and poetry ideas with Laura Purdie Salas, Amy Ludwig VanDerwater and Betsy Franco.
- 7 poems about school by Laura Purdie Salas
- School Poems from The Poem Farm by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater
- Read Anatomy Class by Betsy Franco.
- Classroom tips from Messing Around on the Monkey Bars: and Other School Poems Written in Two Voices by Betsy Franco
photo by istockphoto and poem by Deborah Ruddell
Enjoy and share, “The Very First Day of School” by Deborah Ruddell. Check out her new book, The Popcorn Astronauts.
Paige Bentley-Flannery is a Community Librarian at Deschutes Public Library. For over fifteen years–from Seattle Art Museum to the New York Public Library to the Deschutes Public Library-Paige’s passion and creative style for art, poetry and literature have been combined with instructing, planning, and providing information. Paige is currently serving on the ALSC Notable Children’s Book Committee, 2015 – 2017. She is a former Chair of the ALSC Digital Content Task Force and member of the ALSC Great Websites Committee.
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