Poetry Centers

April is National Poetry Month, and though I share poetry with students all year round, this is a chance for me to focus on this genre for a few weeks in a row. Working with K-6 students is an opportunity to use technology with different grade levels to see how they respond. What are they ready to use in Kindergarten? What do most 6th graders already know how to use and how can I build on that knowledge?

I borrowed an idea for a Poetry Picnic from A Year in Reading and created poetry centers that students experienced for two weeks during their scheduled 30-45 minute library time. The centers each had a focus of writing, reading, art, and/or technology, giving students a variety of positive experiences with poetry.

The technology centers included a Kindle, an iPad, an interactive whiteboard, and computers.

On the Kindle students read "Poetry Tag Time," (99 cents) reading out loud poems by Jack Prelutsky, Joyce Sidman, and many other poets for fluency practice.

On the iPad, they had a choice of several poetry apps:

• Animal Tales (99 cents)- a hidden object app based on Mother Goose's Animal Tales
• Fridge Poet (free)- a magnetic poetry app
• A Kid's Poem: My Wagon and I (free)- an audio poem with illustrations
• Shel Silverstein's Animations (free)- short animated poems and excerpts from Shel Silverstein's books.

Students had two choices while using the interactive whiteboard:

• Poetry Splatter - from the Reading is Fundamental website, students choose words to complete poems
• Magnetic Poetry - the official Magnetic Poetry website has several online kits

Several poetry websites were bookmarked on computers in the library for students:

• Giggle Poetry - poetry to read and games to play
• Poetry4Kids - Kenn Nesbitt's website
• Shel Silverstein's website
• Tagxedo - create shape poems with tag clouds online, students enter words and phrases to fill the shape, then publish the result
• Phrasr - online image generator, where students entered a line of poetry they had written

Most center activities were successful with all grade levels, though Kindergarten students did not use the computers to access websites. We looked at Giggle Poetry and Poetry4Kids as a whole class, reading a few poems and playing a few games.

All of the students wanted to use the iPad, the Kindle, and the interactive whiteboard. Technology draws them in and they are receptive to ideas and topics they might have ignored before, such as poetry. Some students immediately shut down when poetry is mentioned, but those students clamored to use the technology and came away with some exposure to poetry through these centers.