April is National Poetry Month! Here's how you can make the most of the month.

 

Get a free "Who Needs Poetry?" bookmark
Add your own verses to the poem on the bookmark. What other kinds of kids need poetry?  Besides kids, who else needs poetry? Download the bookmark at:
http://www.caroleweatherford.com/who%20needs%20poetry%20bookmark.pdf

Hold a Sidewalk Chalk Poetry Fest

Try fun ideas inspired by Sidewalk Chalk: Poems of the City. www.caroleweatherford.com/sidewalk_lesson_plan.htm

 

Write a letter poem (also known as an epistle).

Read Dear Mr. Rosenwald and write a first-person letter poem about how much your school or your teacher means to you.

 

Write a forget-me-not.

Read the title poem in Remember the Bridge: Poems of a People and write a list poem about people, places or things you don’t ever want to forget.

 

Get jazzed about poetry.

April is also Jazz Appreciation Month. Read Jazz Baby (or Bebe Musicale in Spanish) and pretend to play instruments named in the poem. Or make your own instruments from recycled objects.  Remember:  Poetry makes music with words.

 

Experience poetry as theater.

Present Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom as a readers theater, puppet show or shadow play. Harriet Tubman’s voice is in italic, the narrator’s voice in Roman type, and God’s voice in oversize capital letters.  Let students provide sound effects for animal and nature sounds and sing the African-American spirituals—Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, Wade in the Water, and Go Down, Moses—between verses of the poem.

 

Get in character.

Read poems about famous or ordinary people from Remember the Bridge: Poems of a People.  Write a poem in the voice of a relative or historical figure whom you admire.