National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month. I love teaching my students about reading and writing poetry. Here's a quick round up of poetry activities I look forward to using with my class every year.

This blog post is geared toward the K-2 classroom, but for great poetry resources for all grade levels check out Read Write Think.
Here are some of my must have read alouds/picture books for National Poetry Month. Click on my Amazon affiliate links to take a closer look at these books.
            
One of the first things I do when teaching poetry is break down the parts of a poem with this anchor chart. It's not my fanciest work but it gets the job done. Check out our old school pencil sharpener! All classrooms in my school still have one. I wonder if we'll ever get them removed? 

One of the first poems I do with my class is a biography poem. Every year when we take pictures, Lifetouch always sends a strip of picture stickers for each student. I love reading the three adjectives students use to describe themselves the most!

Another favorite of mine is the rainbow name acrostic poem. I first saw the idea on Pinterest, but can't pin point who originally posted the idea. One of the reasons I love this acrostic poem is how it can easily be part of an adjectives lesson. This year I might switch things up by having students also do an acrostic poem about spring. 

One of the last poems we write is a formula poem. Each student writes a formula poem about a favorite thing. Of course one of my favorite things is a cupcake! First we study each of the five lines while we create a class example. Students create their own poem after our class example is finished. This poem I usually save as part of a writing station in April. 

What are you favorite ways to teach poetry in your classroom? Have a wonderful week! 

Five for Friday...Goodbye January!

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs again to share some of what was jammed packed into the last week of January. This week certainly proved to be a whirlwind! I don't plan on leaving my house this weekend until it's absolutely necessary.

I think I can speak for every teacher at my school when I say Thursday left us EXHAUSTED. Not only was it picture day, but we had important visitors in the building. Visiting principals from other schools and other district employees made rounds in the afternoon to do observations. There was only one slight problem; BOOM! The power went out thanks to strong wind. We had to think quick and teach with no electricity for a couple of hours. Thankfully my classroom has a window that gave us some extra light.

I completely understand this poster now!

I started using anchor charts this year and I love them! They're a great year long reference and good to create whole group. Here's our possessive nouns anchor chart.

We made another anchor chart for science. I'm not the best artist but as long as the content is there and the minis understand it's all good to me. I was in a rush taking pictures this afternoon and forgot to turn off the projector. Apologizes for blank randomly popping up at the bottom. 

One of my favorite stories is Officer Buckle and Gloria. The minis brainstormed their own safety tips.

 I love safety tip #10!

If your fortunate enough to have YouTube access in your district it can be a great techie resource. Do you ever wish you could clean it up a bit? Presenting YouTube Clean to the rescue.

Here's what a YouTube video normally looks like. Sometimes we don't want all the extra on the side even if it's good stuff that's kid friendly.

 Just type in clean between YouTube and the.com part.

 Ta-da! The end result is the same video without the fluff!

Have a great weekend! I'll be dreaming of warm weather and flip flops. 

Manic Monday

What a difference a day makes! Today I felt like a chicken with it's head cut off running around since we were out Friday due to weather. I've got to take a quick moment to brag on the minis. I'm not sure if it was the extended weekend, our elf, or the beginning of the week but they were angels today. My fingers are crossed they repeat this behavior again tomorrow. It was so silent most of the day you could have heard a pin drop. We had  TON of work to do today; the minis were so cooperative.

This morning Clara Cupcake was caught sleeping on the job! She decided to make herself a comfy bed with a tissue box. We're having so much fun with our elf visitor each day. Today Clara C. had a special job for us.

This was the note I read to students this morning. Instead of keeping all the Christmas cheer for ourselves, we made Christmas cards for our fourth grade buddies. 

We're working on writing and reading numbers up to 999 in math. I had some place value work mats I inherited from the previous teacher in my classroom. Each student had a due they rolled three times; once for the hundreds, once for tens, and the final roll for ones. They had to draw a model for their number plus write it in standard and expanded form. I'm going to use another version of this activity in learning stations later this week. Students were working in their groups, but it was completely silent! I was so impressed with their hard work they earned a compliment towards sweet treats. 

We also completed our gingerbread glyphs in math. I love a good glyph activity because each student is able to showcase what's special about them.

When we were finished we put our gingerbread men out in the hall around our bulletin board.

Our current science unit is all about air and weather. We created this anchor chart together to help us remember how to read celsius temperature. I'm not happy with the black line I drew straight through the mercury but this turned into a teachable moment. Even teachers make mistakes. I'll probably go back tomorrow and fix this.

Dorky teacher moment: As I'm blogging my heart out Blogger spell check keeps saying celsius is spelled incorrectly. I instantly panic and have to Goggle it 3 times before I'm sure it's correct.

I'm one tired teacher tonight. I see early bedtime in my future, zzzz. I can't wait to show you what Clara C. is up to next. Stay turned and stay warm!