Happy April and Happy National Poetry Month!
Looking for some cool ways to celebrate? Check out Poets.org for all kinds of great resources for teachers, students, librarians and poetry lovers of all ages.
This year, the Academy of American Poets is introducing a multimedia educational project called Poet-to-Poet that features seven videos of award winning poets on the Board of Chancellors reading and discussing one of their poems.
Students in grades 3-12 are invited to write their own poems in response to any of the videos and email them by April 30, 2014. All poems will be considered for publication at Poets.org during the month of May. There’s also a set of Lesson Plans aligned with the Common Core for teachers wishing to use Poet-to-Poet in their classrooms.
Check out “30 Ways to Celebrate Poetry Month,” “Poem in Your Pocket Day” (April 24), and the April 2014 Events Calendar. You can also download a free Poetry Month poster.
Now, here’s a list of what some kidlit bloggers are doing. If you’re also celebrating Poetry Month with a special project or blog event, or know of anyone else who is, please email me: readermail (at) jamakimrattigan (dot) com, so I can add the information to this Roundup. Thanks!
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2014 KIDLITOSPHERE EVENTS
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🌻 Irene Latham at Live Your Poem has recruited 30 poets for her third annual Kidlit Progressive Poem. This is a wonderful community writing project where a poem travels daily from blog to blog, with each host adding a line. Charles Waters is contributing the opening line today. More details and full 2014 Roster can be found here.
🌍 At A Year of Reading, bask in “Our Wonderful World.” Each day this month, Mary Lee Hahn will highlight a human-made or natural wonder of the world (selected from a variety of lists) and use it as inspiration for an original poem. So a poem a day and a wonder a day — though we all know poems are wonders themselves, right? Mary Lee invites readers to help celebrate her chosen wonders by leaving a poem or blog post link in the comments. Click here to see the wonders she’s chosen. I am especially fond of #28. 🙂
🌹 Jone MacCulloch will be sharing student poetry daily at Check It Out. She’s also once again doing her annual Poetry Postcard Project, where her students send out illustrated poetry postcards to anyone requesting them. Sign up HERE if you’d like to receive one. At Jone’s personal blog, Deowriter, she’ll be posting original poems each day.
🌸 The always inventive Laura Purdie Salas presents Riddle-ku at Writing the World for Kids. Each day, she’ll post a riddle haiku about a common object with two photo hints/clues and the answer, just right for sharing in the classroom. Kids ages K+ are bound to find this project totally riddle-kulous! 🙂
Jama's Alphabet Soup 