How to use this Page

It’s coming . . . Eight Days . . . Eight Poems . . . Insight into poetry that only comes from being a poet yourself. Join us for our poetry challenge:  What?  No blog?  Don’t let that stop you!  Use Google Docs . . . simply upload your poem to Google Docs and then copy + paste the link in [...]

Poetry Portfolio Originally uploaded by teachergal It’s May. National Poetry Month is over. However, that means that I’m just three weeks away from the start of our final unit of study: POETRY! I decided to take the eight poems I had done for [...]

I LOVE Jane Yolen’s book Color Me a Rhyme: Nature Poems for Young People. In fact, I read it to my class last year on the first day of our poetry unit of study. They were so inspired that they wanted to write color poems right then and there. I never thought [...]

This is my color poem, which is written in a list poem format.

How often do you truly experience something with all five of your senses? Dew’s Poem Starters got me thinking about using all five of my senses to capture an emotion. Dew’s provides a simple template that can help you get started if you need poetic inspiration today. Be sure to come back later today [...]

I’ve probably written couplets before, but I don’t think I realized it. You see, I disliked poetry when I was in elementary school because I thought it ALL had to rhyme. Once I took a creative writing class in college, I realized that wasn’t the case. Nonetheless, had someone presented me with [...]

A Couplet About the Tomato Salads I Created For Dinner Originally uploaded by teachergal I was slicing tomatoes, crumbling goat cheese, sprinkling salt, and drizzling olive oil last night. The smell brought me back to Villeneuve-sur-Lot, where I lived for nearly four weeks in 1994. [...]

Even if you didn’t partake in Day 1 of the Challenge, you may start at any time with: Today’s inspiration to jump-start your writing, if you need it: Try writing an “I used to be…, but now I am” Poem. You can juxtapose your younger and older self or compare and contrast two things. If [...]

First Draft of A Recipe Poem Written by Me INGREDIENTS: 1 paper cut on the pinky from a Word Study Sheet 2 small cuts on the thumb from carelessness 3 painful paper cuts on the middle finger from who-knows-what 5 too-short fingernails due to semi-recently removed wraps An assortment of ripped-up cuticles and hangnails from daily wear-and-tear DIRECTIONS: Grab your car keys. Put the key [...]

I like challenging myself and my students with their writing. So… in honor of National Poetry Month, I thought about creating a week-long poetry challenge since I’d like to create more poetry of my own to share with my students during minilesson demonstrations. Hence… I was thinking about starting this Challenge on Saturday, 4/12 [...]

I have not intentionally chosen another picture book as Book of the Week. Nor, to be more specific, have I chosen another wordless picture book to be Book of the Week. That was just a fluke. Peter Collington's The Tooth Fairy was selected last week to commemorate the loss of my daughter's first tooth. It just so happens that ever since we snatched Bow Wow Bugs a Bug (Newgarden, Mark and Megan Montague Cash) from our local library's stacks, my daughter has insisted on "reading" it every night. I have tried wordless picture books on her before, with little success. I don't know if she feels ripped off because there are no words or what, but for whatever reason, the illustrations were never enough to spark her imagination. Not so with Bow Wow--and she's not even a dog person! Each night we have taken turns making up the story to go along with the--truly daft--illustrations. The story is simple enough--a terrier is perturbed by a speck of a bug and follows him around town. My favorite bit is when the terrier comes face to face with an identical terrier sniffing down an identical speck of a bug. The two dogs take part in a mirroring montage straight out of Duck Soup. It's a sly bit of cultural knowledge slipped into a children's book: funny for the kids, a wonderful tip-of-the-hat for Marx Brothers buffs. See? Not just for kids!