Spring is Here Poetry Hop

I am so excited to join in with many of my blogging friends as we share poetry ideas and resources with all of you, our readers!  Since all of us share a passion for all things reading, we have some wonderful ideas for helping you and your students enjoy using poetry during April, which is National Poetry Month.  

I love using poetry for so many different reasons.  I use poetry daily with my students to build fluency.  We also work on visualizing, main idea, and author's purpose as we read the poems, even in kindergarten and first grade!  They love being able to draw pictures of their poems to show their understanding of the poems.

Poetry can be used for so many different skills and ideas.  So many times we focus on just writing poetry, which helps students understand elements of poetry.  It is a great way to help students gain a true understanding of poetry since they are using many of those elements to create their own poems.

My students have been focusing a lot on understanding poetry before and after trying their hand at writing poetry.  They want to understand why an author wrote a specific poem or part of a poem.  I  worked on helping students choose poems they enjoyed reading and figuring out some different things about them.  To do this, I created my Poetry Activities for Any Poem.  Click {here} or on the picture below to grab your freebie!

We worked on using the different activities with books and poems they chose to show understanding of various different poems. What I loved the most was listening to them talk about their poems, so their friends would want to read each one.  Here are some pictures of the activities in action.

The Scavenger Hunt

Main Idea and Visualization

Reading poems and Poetry Questions Card

There are so many different places to find good poems for the students to use.  I got these books free from Scholastic one year through the book orders.  I had enough leftover for a reading group set, which I use a lot!  There are also many great websites to find poems for students to use.  My favorite is Giggle Poetry by Bruce Lansky.  There are so many fun poems kids can enjoy and print out!

After using these with success in my intervention group, I continued to add more activities I plan to do with my students during poetry month.  These include an author's purpose page, fluency activities, and task cards.  I added these to the freebie to create a paid product:  Poetry Analysis Activities for Any Poem with Task Cards.  

You get all of this when you purchase!

It will be half off throughout the hop, or you can win it by entering the Rafflecopter below!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Now, hop on over to Deniece's blog This Little Piggy Reads to see what she has up her sleeve with poetry and grab your freebie!

And if you want to start from the beginning, click below to head over to Comprehension Connection!

Graphics in hop buttons provided by Educlips and Epiphanous Owl.  Fonts by Jen Jones.