These ideas are aimed at teachers of primary and secondary students; they offer ways in which you might like to use this blog site (http://wwww.australianchildrenspoetry.com.au) or otherwise employ poetry in your classroom. Have students:

• Research and find poems from poets listed in the A to Z of Australian children’s poetry and then give a class presentation
• Check out at least one of the poetry website links on the blog site and tell the class what they found
• Enter poems they have written into children’s competitions listed on the site
• Write an email – or a letter – to one of the poets listed on the blog site
• Write a poem and submit it to the site as the Poem of the Day
• Invite a poet – or a community leader – to visit your school to read and/or recite poems at your school assembly.
• Ask every child in your class to find a poem they love and create a class poetry anthology
• Organise a poetry reading based on poems collected for the anthology
• Write a class acrostic poem using the teacher’s surname
• Find out about free verse and read a verse novel
• Make a collection of poems displayed on the site (from the A to Z of poets) and from the Poem of the Day
• Display a Poem of the Day written by a student on the class noticeboard
• Find and share silly, short poems written by Anonymous
• For a class assembly item, have the class present poetry connected by a theme (for example: family, food, games)
• For a fun activity in class, have students talk to one another in rhyming couplets for a limited period
• Raid home, public and school libraries for poetry collections and anthologies; when it’s time for DEAR, have students read from one of the books
• After DEAR, each child share a poem they really liked
• Memorise and recite poems found on the Australian children’s poetry blog site
• Have class work together to write an article about poetry in their class and submit it to the blog site
• Have students find children’s poetry websites and blogs not listed on the blog site and submit them as links
• Feel free to send in information about how you employ poetry in your classroom if you’re a teacher. Or if you are a student, send in your thoughts, too! Send to dibates@outlook.com