Poetry Packet

I have always done Poetry Packet with my kiddos. My Cooperating Teacher during student teaching did poetry packet, and I loved how much she was able to teach through a poem of the week. I know many other teachers do something similar, but since a coworker asked about it today, I thought I would share how I do poetry packet!

We have a new poem each week, and we read it at the end calendar time / beginning of literacy as a good transition. I project the poem onto the whiteboard with the LCD projector and point to the words as I/we/they read it. That way I can model their "must-do" before we go into centers.

Each poem has a short activity to go with it - for example, our color words poem has a box at the bottom for students to write their favorite color and draw a picture of something that is that color.

On Mondays, students' "must-do" is to complete the activity with the poem. Or if there's no activity, draw a picture to accompany the poem.
On Tuesdays, students highlight sight words with a yellow crayon.
On Wednesdays, students trace vowels with a red crayon.
On Thursdays, students trace punctuation with a green crayon.
On Fridays, students read the poem silently three times.

Since we seem to have less time in our schedule this year to spend on Poetry Packet, I have included the poems in students' take-home binders (BEACH Books). This way students carry their poems home and back everyday, and reading the poem of the week is part of their nightly homework. It gets parents involved too! As parents see what their children are working on each day in the P.P. those conversations help to reinforce all that we are learning at school - and I always love that!