Poetry Month, Poetry Friday

Happy National Poetry Month!

Have you heard the excited rumblings about The Poetry Friday Anthology: Poems for the School Year with Connections to the Common Core? Edited by Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong, this is an incredible resource for teachers and librarians. Divided into grades, kindergarten through fifth, there are 218 poems by 75 poets (including me), each one accompanied by “Take 5” classroom strategies and suggestions for books that will round out your study.

From reading out loud to writing prompts to discussion tips, we’ve heard from many educators who find this 282-page resource FUN to use. “We look forward to Fridays in our classroom,” one educator confided. “The Poetry Friday Anthology has been a godsend.”

Here’s one of my poems included in this book:

            Bluebirds          

            I built a house
            of sturdy wood;
            I waited and waited
            as long as I could.

            Then one sunny day
            in the first week of May,
            two bluebirds flew in
            and decided to stay.

            So I waited and waited
            and waited some more
            now instead of just two
            those bluebirds are FOUR!

 Included for Third Grade, “Bluebirds” is used on Friday in Week 8, and the activities support this Common Core standard, “We can help students understand how poets use lines and stanzas to build poems in distinctive ways.”

You can purchase this book from Pomelo Books