Thank you, Amy LV! {Poetry Friday}

I know last week I restarted a poetry plan and I decided to pause that plan for an impromptu moment from my classroom. I saw a tweet this morning from @amylvpoemfarm where she was sharing her Friday post on her fabulous resource, The Poem Farm. I was intrigued with the idea of making an if list for poetry. My class has been reading poetry to start our Fridays. Just last week we started picking one to share with others and I felt an itch to help them write poetry. 

We started our day by reading poetry and a quick morning meeting. We paused our time together for music and shared poems we wanted others to hear when we got back. Then I shared with them one of our favorite authors Amy Ludwig Vanderwater had a blog and I saw an idea I thought we could try. We read Amy's post and listened to her recording. I wondered if we could write an If...poem together and then they could try one in their writer's notebooks. 

We collaborated using a shared writing format. A pattern emerged as students took turns. We had the ending before the third and fourth stanzas. We talked about short lines and slowing down as we reread our developing draft. This represents our community. It represents our us as learners and it represents our physical space.

We had to publish our writing and each child did an illustration. It was joyful to listen to the illustration conversations. They knew which lines they were specifically illustrating. We are going to put individual copies in our Poetry Folders we use for practicing all things fluency.

Thank you Amy LV for inspiring our writing thoughts and hearts. XO

Thank you Jone for hosting Poetry Friday this week.