Are You Ready for Some Poetry? 

I'm so excited about my new and improved Acrostic and Focus Poetry packet! I've added some new "Zing" and "Color" to it and I can't wait to share it with you! I hope you like it too! 

Poetry Cover Page

By the way, you have to drink some coffee while your reading this post. It will help you pretend that you're in a coffeehouse and listening to poetry... ok not really. Lol

Last month I blogged about how I incorporate poetry into my themes. I teach one poem a week and have it hanging above my poetry center. The poem goes with the theme that I am teaching. This is a poem that I wrote about Martin Luther King Jr. It is called "Dreams".  I've used this poem with first grade and third grade! They always get a kick when they see my name at the bottom. They cannot believe that I actually wrote it!

Dreams

In January when we study MLK, we read this poem and learn about the punctuation and parts of speech. If you notice on the side of the poem are index cards hanging down. These are my ladders. I call them my parts of speech and punctuation ladders. On each index card is a skill that we find in the poem. I make sure to not go over the skill until after I have taught it. This is great because I can spiral skills all year long and what a fun and easy way to review parts of speech and punctuation! Poetry lends itself to so many skills: creating mental images, connections, rhyming, fluency, comprehension, author's purpose... the list goes on!
I've made new ladders in my poetry packet so they look cuter than before. I love polk-a-dots, so I used all different colors for the backgrounds. Here are some of the punctuation cards. You simple print, laminate and cut apart. You can hang them on the way beside your poem, or shrink down and put them on a ring.

Punctuation Ladder

Here are some of my cards for the parts of speech ladder.

Parts of Speech Ladder

Another thing I added to this packet is having the poems in color and black and white! This way the teacher has a choice of which template is better for her students. My preference is, the black and white ones. I LOVE to have my students illustrate the background and color the pictures on the poems. It makes it more student friendly this way. But, I do know of some teachers who like to print in color and they are so beautiful! So the choice is yours! Here are some of the many poems in the packet. These are originals that I wrote for my students.  All you need to do is shrink these down about 80% when you copy them for the students so they will fit inside their poetry journal.

Poems in Color 
And... in black and white!

Poems in Black and White

I also did the same thing to my acrostic poems. I've written acrostic poems for every holiday. These are so fun and easy to teach. I teach acrostic poetry at the beginning of the year, but it's also something I spiral with other themes and craftivities. You can teach this cross curricular in social studies and math too!

Acrostic Poems in Color

Acrostic Poems in Black and White

I hope you got some great ideas on how to incorporate your poetry in your classroom this year! If you are interested in checking out my new and improved Focus Poetry Packet click below.

Love, Kara

Acrostic and Focus Poetry for Every Holiday: Grades 1-3

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