Poetry Night

I have been promising a post about our poetry night so here it is-- unfortunately I was so pumped/nervous/overwhelmed on the night of that I didn't take pictures. I did have a dad videotape the whole thing, but no pictures. Let me set the stage for you.

Our kids had been working on poetry for about a month. I would love to say that all the ideas were ours, but we purchased Amanda Nickerson's fantastic Writer's Coffeehouse Starter Kit. <----Click here The kids and their parents (all but 3 of mine came- 2 were sick and one no-show) came into the room where we had moved all the desks out of the way. I hung butcher paper on the wall as a back drop. I also had cookies and all our hot chocolate (ahem- I mean coffee sitting out on a table). The students were so excited. They all wore black and some wore cute Poet-style hats as well. We started out with 2 Reader's Theaters--Click, Clack, Moo and The Three Little Javelinas (The book that we used in our Desert Unit). Since we were studying the African Savanna I had some boys read some interesting facts about animals from Africa. After a coffee and cookie break, we turned the lights off and used our projector light as a spotlight. The kids also got to use a real microphone so everyone could hear their amazing poetry. After each poem the parents and kids snapped for each other (they felt so cool :) ). Overall the night went off without a hitch. I even had some teary-eyed moms due to some heart-wrenching poems! I have to admit that this tops my list of teaching experiences to this point... but stay tuned we just purchased Babbling Abby's Wizard of Oz Unit <---- Click here...to be used in May... and I am SOOO excited!