Poetry Journals

Each week, my class learns a new poem.  The poem is a part of our morning slideshow so we read it everyday.  On Monday, I read it to them once and then we echo read it.  On Tuesday, we echo read after me, and then choose a student to echo read after.  On Wednesday, we echo read after a student, and then choral read it.  On Thursday, we choral read it, and then they read it to their shoulder-partners.  On Friday, they read it to themselves with their whisper phones.  I choose poems that go with our current theme.  We glue the poems into journals and the kids take them home to read to their parents.  I made all of the pages for the poems so they also have activities.  For example - next week, we are learning short a.  Our poem is called A-A-Animals.  It is full of short a words.  The kids will highlight all the short a words and then we brainstorm animals that have a short a in their names.  I make a list of these on the board and then they draw one in their journal.  This is just one example of how the journals are used.  We do TONS of fun stuff with them. 

Making the journals is tedious, but in the end it is so worth it!  I print a cover with each child's name on cute printer paper.  I glue this to 9x12 construction paper.  I laminate this front cover and a blank paper for the back cover.  I cut cardstock into strips that are 3" by 8.5".  I hole-punch one side with my binding machine.   These serve as the "pages" for our book.  I bind it all together with a binding comb.  The pages will be glued to these strips.  If the cover were made with a standard 8.5x11 paper, the inside pages would stick out.  That is why I use 9x12 covers.

 Because I want these to last all year, I run a line of E6000 glue along the spine.  You DO know about E600, right?  BEST glue EVER!!!  Each week, a new poem is glued to these little strips.  This makes a really nice poetry book for the kids to keep at the end of the year.  It is like a memory book/portfolio. 

Poems are WONDERFUL for building fluency, working on rhymes and building confidence in beginning readers.  Making these journals takes me about 8 hours from start to finish, but they are a wonderful resource all year long. 

Do you use poetry journals in your classroom?  If you have any ideas, questions, or suggestions, please share them in the comments.  Thanks for reading!