All Together Now: Collaborations in Poetry Writing

Have students create individual poetry anthologies including original work, favorite published poems and illustrations. Consider having technically savvy students build a Web page for their poetry using an HTML editor.

Invite a local poet into your classroom to share with the students and to listen to their work. Poet-in-the-classroom programs are widespread.

Look for ways to use poetry throughout the curriculum. For example, if you cover ecology and the problem of waste disposal, Shel Silverstein's "Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would Not Take the Garbage Out" might be a good starting point for discussion.

Once your students are experienced poets, consider a field trip to a local art museum. Give students the opportunity to react to art with poetry. If students choose a work of art that inspires them, take some time later to discuss what inspires people to write poetry (or to create art for that matter). What inspired the students about each particular work? How did that inspiration lead to a poem?

Link poetry, art and research with student-created "wonder books." In their wonder books, students make drawings of and list observations concerning things that they wonder about. They then conduct research and use non-fiction/fiction/poetry to report on their findings.