National Poetry Month materials

So my digital friends Bud Hunt and Kevin Hodgson have created a bit of a monster.  In honor of National Poetry Month, Bud is posting images on his blog every day to spark the poetic fire in each of his readers and Kevin is writing some amazing bits in response to every image.

I stopped by one day just figuring to give the project a look and ended up getting hooked, writing more poetry in two weeks than I’ve probably written my entire life.  I also find myself driving around town revising poetry in my mind, and most nights, I can’t fall asleep because I’m looking for just the right word to add to the next day’s poem.

And I’m having fun!

So how’s this help you? 

I’ve also started creating poetry materials to use with my students when we track back in to school at the end of April.  While National Poetry Month will officially be over, I figure I’ll try to hook my kids the way that I’ve been hooked.

Not only am I planning to create a bunch more Express Your SELF slides like the one above to advertise, I’m in the middle of a series of lessons that I can use to help my students explore, write and record their own poetry.

Here are the first two lessons in the series:

Download Handout_CharacteristicsofMemorablePoems

Download Handout_WritingMemorablePoems

Hope that some of you can use them—and that you’ll start stopping by Bud’s blog to write with us before the end of the month!

Creative expression is an outlet, y’all.