National Poetry Month: Check These Out

What?  We're more than half way through National Poetry Month already?  Last year I told you about some of my favorite professional resources for teaching poetry.  This year, I want to share some of the events I'm following:

Where Does Poetry Come From?  
Mary Lee Hahn is featuring Common Inspiration:  Uncommon Creations at A Year of Reading.  Each day she is sharing a digital media inspiration from WikiMedia Commons.  Mary Lee is using this picture/video/media as inspiration for her daily poem and encourages others to join her by sharing their own poem inspired from the media.  Additionally, Mary Lee has been sharing useful information about copyright and courtesy when sharing the work of other artists.

Amy Ludwig VanDerwater is sharing Drawing Into Poems.  Each day in April Amy sketches her inspiration for poetry at The Poem Farm.  As she draws each picture she jots words, thoughts, ideas,  and short stories around the illustration.  Some of these will become the inspiration for poetry.  I have shared several of her sketches with my students as we learn to play with our ideas in our writers' notebooks before beginning to write our poems.

Getting to Know Poetry
At Gotta Book Greg Pincus shares 30 Days / 30 Poets.  I've followed this event for a couple of years now and learn so much about poets along the way.  Each day Greg shares an unpublished poem by a different poet as well as important information about their work.

Want to know more about how technology and poetry can work together?  Stop by Author Amok where you'll learn something new each day about technology and poetry.

You should probably make one more stop to No Water River.  I'm enjoying Poetry Is (poets share their thoughts on what is important poetry) and Guest Poets (Renee talks with poets and shares some of their work).  There are many surprises here to share with your students.

Teaching Poetry
Looking for examples of student work?  Ms. Mac shares 30 Days of Student Poetry at Check It Out.

Susan Brown Taylor shares her work with mentor poems.  Each day she chooses a mentor poem, talks about how she uses it with students, and creates her own poem from the mentor text.


Looking for More?  
Stop by Jama's Alphabet Soup for more National Poetry Month Kid-Lit Events.