Hi, Poetry Friday friends. Welcome back to my series of posts from Northfield Elementary’s third grade poetry residency. It’s day two of our fractured fairy tale poems. In the last post, I described the beginning of our workshop. Today’s I’m sharing the brainstorming worksheet I use for this lesson. The key to this poem is […]
Student Poems
Thursday, 14 June 2018
Tuesday, 12 June 2018
Hello, poetry friends! Welcome back to Northfield Elementary School. Today, the third graders are sharing some of their fractured fairy tale poems. This is an exercise in point of view. We started the workshop by gathering in groups, each assigned to a classic fairy tale. The students brainstormed a list of characters in, for example, […]
Sunday, 10 June 2018
Tomorrow is the poetry celebration at Northfield Elementary School. The student poets are welcoming family and friends for a reading and poetry tour of the five third grade classrooms. I’ve been doing an elementary school workshop on odes for many years. This time around, I swapped out my usual model poem and got these poets […]
Thursday, 31 May 2018
Happy Poetry Friday and welcome back to Northfield Elementary School. Today, the third grade poets are working on odes. I’ve been doing an elementary school workshop on odes for many years. Usually, my model poem is “Ode to Pablo’s Tennis Shoes,” by Gary Soto. When it’s time to write, I have the kids take off […]
Wednesday, 30 May 2018
The Northfield Elementary poets have been working hard on their list poems. Today, our lists of juicy words take us inside a desk and a pencil box, explore a beautiful garden, and dig down into the earth. The mentor text for my list poem workshop is Naomi Shihab Nye’s “Words in My Pillow” from the […]
Thursday, 24 May 2018
Welcome back to Northfield Elementary School, Poetry Friday friends. This is my twelfth year as Northfield’s poet-in-residence, working with the third grade team. The annual poetry residency is sponsored by the school PTA’s cultural arts committee, and by an Artist-in-Residence grant from the Maryland State Arts Council. Thank you! This has been a great teaching partnership […]
Thursday, 1 June 2017
Happy Poetry Friday! I’m saying goodbye to Northfield Elementary School this week. For the past month, I’ve been conducting a poetry residency with the school’s third grade. At the bottom of this post, I’m sharing a gallery of some of the poetry displays. The kids outdid themselves this year! Our final workshop was on persona […]
Thursday, 1 June 2017
Today is the poetry open house at Northfield Elementary, where I’ve been in residence for the past month. I haven’t seen the third grade poets since our revision day. It’s always exciting to read their poems again and see how they have developed. Let’s look more closely at persona poems. When we’re creating a character, […]
Tuesday, 30 May 2017
June is almost here! This week, the Northfield 3rd Grade poets, their teachers, and families, will be celebrating poetry at our annual open house. It’s a great time to recognize how hard the students have worked on their poems. I’ve shared the poets’ haiku and food poems. Today, I am posting the third graders’ […]
Thursday, 25 May 2017
Last weekend, I visited my home state for NerdCampNJ. (Hey, Jersey! Looking good.) There’s no better way to spend a rainy Saturday than surrounded by educators, authors, and super readers. One of the highlights of my day was co-leading a workshop: Building Literacy with Poetry and Books in Verse. You can find notes from the workshop […]
Laura Shovan is the author of the award-winning middle grade novel, The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary. Her second book, Takedown, is a Junior Library Guild and PJ Our Way selection. Look for A Place at the Table, co-written with Saadia Faruqi, in 2020. Laura is a poet-in-the-schools Maryland.
