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
I have emailed this post to my daughter’s primary school. Thanks, Di.
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So many great ideas there Di. Let’s hope some teachers take them on board.