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Poetry is Fun?

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Poetry has never been one of my favorite things, but I’ve encountered a few poets and a few new resources over the last couple of semesters that have slowly begun to change my mind. Maybe I shouldn’t say that I don’t like poetry but that I’m really picky about poetry that I enjoy.

Regardless, I’ve encountered a couple of new classroom resources for poetry that I’d like to share with you.

First up is the blackout poem. Now, I’m sure that you’re familiar with this style – ripping a page out of a book or using a newspaper article and creating a poem from the words on the page, using a marker to black out the undesirables, but I’d be willing to bet that you didn’t know that there’s a less messy, less marker-smelly version available online. I’m not even sure what I was looking for the other day, but I stumbled upon the page, Searching for Poetry in Prose, and thought it was a really great resource. Put out by the New York Times, the page supplies two copies of five different texts to chose from, one for you to read as a whole and another next to it that is blacked out as if by marker. You select words for your poem by clicking on the readable text and the word is revealed in the blacked out version. If you change your mind, just click on it again. You’re allowed 15 words.

I like this because it’s a bit cleaner to do and you don’t have to destroy a book. Downfalls, however, include being limited to only 5 text options and only 15 words for your poem (which could also be viewed as a pleasant challenge), and the novelty of coloring or even drawing a picture is lost.

We didn’t use this site in the classroom this semester, as I just found it yesterday, but we did make blackout poems the old fashioned way and the kids loved it. Several of them ended up making two or three. The poems turned out so great that we used them for our display during student-led conferences. They are still hanging on the wall and the kids really like reading each other’s work; many of them are fairly entertaining.

PicLit is a tool we used this semester when writing haikus. To create a PicLit, choose a picture for your background and start writing. You can opt to drag and drop words from a given selection or the site allows you to write in a freestyle manner. You’re also given the options to save, blog/share, and email your PicLit. The students had a lot of fun with this too and they were anxious to make more than one. I’m not sure how popular the site has become, but my cooperating teacher told me that she and her classes had a great experience with it last year. The person who designed it had just put up the page and hadn’t had a whole lot of users yet. When her classes made them, he took the time to read through and offer feedback.

Here’s an example of a PicLit

Haiku Sidenote:

This is a haiku that was composed for me by a friend of my husband. They had me on speakerphone and he was trying to win the spot as my “Favorite Friend of Jimmy” and felt that poetry was the way to my heart. You’ll notice that the last two syllables do not make up a real word which was originally intended to be potato, but the o makes too many syllables. I’m told that Aspiring Favorite Friend of Jimmy was very upset at this and felt dejected enough to stop trying to find a two-syllable word. Apparently he doesn’t care about me that much. ;) Still, the original draft is framed and hangs in the hallway in my house.

Poetry photo found at http://parnassusreview.com/


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