In her book, Awakening the Heart, Georgia Heard describes her wonderful poetry project that she calls the Living Anthology Project. As she writes,
"Poetry Anthologies often sit quietly on the shelves in libraries, but a 'living anthology' is a collection of poems that come alive on the walls of a classroom, school, town, subway, or streets so that poetry can become a familiar and everyday presence in people's lives."
My students have been listening to, reading, and writing poems for the last few weeks and as we prepared to display their work, we thought this project was a great way to launch National Poetry Month throughout the school.
After walking through the halls looking for places that might inspire poetry, the children read poem after poem, marking each possibility with a post-it. They chose the places, ordinary and familiar, such as bathrooms, a water fountain, the library, a window overlooking the playground, and the nurse's office. I didn't want to spend much time typing each poem. Instead, we scanned the poems from their books which also allowed us to include the original and often charming illustrations.
Here's a favorite poem that I shared in October. It fits this project perfectly and the kids love it!
Happy Poetry Friday!
