The Poet-Tree

Is April National Poetry Month because two famous poems mention it in the first line?* I don't know, but National Poetry Month is as good a theme as any for a Family Literacy Program ... and since I'm never one to pass up a pun, we created a "poet-tree," with every leaf a poem created by one of our students and/or their children:

Before we wrote the poems, we talked about different kinds of poetic language: rhyme (everybody contributed eagerly to this discussion); assonance (a hard concept!); meter and syllable count; and acrostic poems - I had written one on the board using my name, which seemed to delight the kids.

The parents, older siblings and I helped the little kids write their poems. They mostly wanted to write acrostic poems of their names. One older brother who loves both poetry and his little sister wrote an alphabet acrostic in her praise. The elementary age older brothers wrote lots of poems about King Kong playing ping pong. Some of the parents and older kids wrote very nice poems; the poetry-loving older brother wrote a real stunner.

For story time, there are about a zillion wonderful rhyming picture books out there; for no particular reason except that I like the rhythm and the illustrations, I chose Spike Lee's Please, Puppy, Please.

Design info: I got lots of great ideas on how to create a poet-tree from the pubyac yahoo group. I made our tree from a cardboard box that had held a flipchart pad: I opened the box completely and drew a tree on the inside. It can stand on its own when it's not pinned to the wall.

- Ann Daniels, Oakland FFL

*The April first lines are from The Canterbury Tales and The Waste Land - neither of which, as far as I can recall, mentions King Kong playing ping pong.