This morning’s awesome beauty.

There is something to be said for memorizing beauty, whether it is in words or mind pictures. We’ve been practicing reading our poetry out loud for a couple of weeks. Students each chose two poems to memorize and recite for the class. Some of them are really coming along and I can tell that the poem is beginning to come from their heart. Some are still struggling to get the words down and some, well, they’ll need the written words.

During all of this, we’ve also been writing our own poetry and now we’re working to build

My resident hay poet.

our own anthologies, complete with art work. I’m excited to see how these projects turn out. Not only do my students need to have about twelve original poems, but they will also submit a piece of writing discussing their process through this unit-good or bad, and they’ll be writing an author bio about themselves.

Once they finish this project, we’ll have a presentation and sharing day where they’ll not only present their finished anthology project, but they’ll stand up and recite one of their own poems. I hope to make the room like some kind of cozy coffee shop, but I’m not quite sure how to accomplish that, except to provide some yummy little baked goods. I think it will be pretty fun, at least for a word-nerd like me.