On April 22, 2016, the second graders at Dunlap Grade School celebrated National Poetry Month with an all-day Poetry Café.  Parents and grandparents were invited to join in on the fun by participating in poetry activities with the kids.  Our day started with a Poetry Picnic.  We snugged up with a book of poetry and read with classmates and or our special visitors.  We spent the time reading all sorts of poetry and looking for alliteration, rhyming words and poems in different shapes.

The rest of the day was spent exploring poetry in the following activities:

Newspaper Poetry: This is where poets cut out words/headlines/letters out of newspapers and rearranged them until a poem emerged.

Performance Poetry: Poets were placed into groups and chose a poem to perform for the class.  The groups practiced fluency and created actions to go with their poems.

Pass the Plate Poetry: Poets worked in collaborative groups.  Each group had a plate with one word written in the middle.  The plate was then passed around, with each student adding his or her word somewhere on the plate.  The word they wrote needed to go with the word in the middle.  The goal was to pass the plate as many times as possible.

Roll- the-Dice Poetry: Poets explored syllables while writing these poems.  A pair of dice was used to roll numbers that needed to be added.  Whatever the total amount was that was the number of syllables the line of the poem had to have.

Selfie Poetry: Poets used Chromebooks and Padlet to write Selfie poems that talked all about themselves!  They could write about what they liked, disliked, what we looked like, and or what they were proud of! They then took a selfie of course to include with their poem.

Book Spine Poetry: Poets worked in groups to arrange at least 8 books that had titles written on the spine.  Then they had to stack the books in a way/order that created a poem.

Magnetic Poetry:  The day ended with making our own magnetic poetry by finding words in magazines and attaching them to magnets!

It was a fun day of embracing the perfectly poetic world of poetry.  The Poetry Café really helped us practice authentic writing, develop a purpose for writing and share our writing with a real audience.  It was great to see so many families participate and engage in poetry and celebrate this wonderful genre of writing with us.

What poem was your favorite?  What poem was easiest to write?  Which one was the hardest?  What poems will your write in the future?