Everywhere I look at present in Blog world or Twitter, I see and hear poetry! This always gets my creative juices flowing, so this post is in support of all those brave teacher poets out there. Hope you can use this idea to astound and amaze your students and colleagues. Today, it’s all about repeating ourselves… Repetition is an old and basic element in poetry. It goes back to poetry's origin in chants and spells. Something "magical" happens when you repeat a word, phrase or line. It gives the reader a chance to rest before setting forth again. It becomes the refrain that glues the words together. Words take on new dimensions, subtleties, and connotations. It creates patterns--and echoes. To create a poem using repetition, you could begin by making a list using one of the following starting points: Somewhere you went today Today's weather Description of your clothes An event you witnessed recently 10 randomly selected simp...

It is April and that means National Poetry Month in the USA ! I vividly recall during my six years living and working in the US how schools went into poetry mode each April. I found this focus on poetry left me in a quandary. I love poetry, so this national focus on poetry was something that greatly impressed me. It brought this ancient genre to centre stage and I considered that was something our Australian schools could learn from. Poetry in such a supportive environment began to shed its elitist cloak. It became accessible to the broader school population. However, something began to gnaw away at me as each successive April celebration unfolded. I became concerned that in the minds of many educators poetry was being constrained to a single month in the school calendar. I wanted to encounter poetry across the school year, but it seemed tightly confined to the month of April in the minds of many. I wanted poetry to pop up unexpectedly; at various times of the school day, and i...