April is National Poetry Month, and many of our students are reading poetry this month in their classes as well. Since I LOVE poetry, I wanted to make sure we read some poetry in the library, and that we participate in Poem in Your Pocket Day.
Last week and this week I have been reading to classes from a new book that I recently received called Outside the Box: A Book of Poems by Karma Wilson and illustrated by Diane Goode.
This book kind of looks like the Shel Silverstein books, so the kids are instantly intrigued by it. I read several poems to each class that came to the library.
After we read and enjoyed these new poems, (and giggled because many of the poems are either quite silly or quite 
humorous) we use this Poem In Your Pocket page to write down a poem. I laden the tables with poetry books form the 811s and for the Kindergartners and 1st graders I put a short poem up under the document camera. I told the kids they could write a poem of their own, write the poem on the screen, or choose a poem from one of the poetry books to write on their paper.
For the few classes I didn’t see, I made copies and put them in the teachers boxes and then podcast myself reading some of the poems for the teachers to play in their classrooms.
I am keeping the papers until Wednesday when I will give them back to the teachers to give to the kids for Thursday. Hopefully every RBE student will have a poem in their pocket on Thursday!
For Poem In Your Pocket Day, I wrote a Haiku that I will be carrying with me inspired by the kindergartners and 1st graders that came to the library today:
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They pick out their books.
Type in numbers. Checkout books.
They devour them!
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Celebrating poetry is probably one of my favorite things to do.
Hopefully this month you will celebrate poetry too!
