Wrapping Up Poetry Month

My Writing a Poem A Day Poetry Unit was a huge hit this month, both online and in our classroom. In case you missed it, here’s the video that tells you all about it. We’ve completed all the poems at school and are in the process of publishing them. I realized that I had a couple freebies you might want if you used my unit with your students. 

You can grab the rubric (in Excel so you can edit it) and the unit description page for parents (editable in Word) to add to your unit. I highly recommend making description pages for all of your writing workshop projects. I love letting parents know exactly what we were working on with each unit and a few things to look for in their child’s writing. Because we publish a different project each month, students have an entire set August-May for their third grade year. How awesome is that?! 


We also worked on partner poems in reading workshop last week. I use them to work on fluency, public speaking, and cooperation skills too. I copy poems and then have students select from groups of poems based on their individual reading ability. The poems are handed out on Monday, and students practice for a few minutes every day in order to present their poems to the class on Friday. Some students memorize their poems, but I have all students attach the words to the back of a poster just in case. Students decorate the poster to match their part in the poem. Students represented the wind, planets, colors, etc. If this sounds like something you want to do with your students, I highly recommend this book.

I try to record my students a few times during the year so I can play the videos back for them. I think it’s beneficial for students to hear how they sound so they can monitor their volume and fluency. Some students don’t realize how softly (or how quickly!) they speak. So, I videotaped the students’ presentations and uploaded them to our classroom website so parents could see them too. They aren’t perfect, but they really do show how students perform in the classroom. I think it’s important for parents to see that.