100 Scope Notes might be the inventor of this form of poetry but I’m not sure. He has a gallery of Spine Poetry and invites everyone to join in. It’s a fun way to celebrate National Poetry Month in April.
I find poetry to be intimidating. It reminds me of standardized tests, as in the case of my 5th grader, PickyKidPix, as well! The structure and forms of poetry leave me struggling to find the rhythm and rhyming of some poems. Even the punctuation confuses me. Do I pause if there is a line break but no punctuation??!
Composing Spine Poetry for National Poetry Month
So let us embrace poetry together. I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours. I invite you to compose your own spine poem and let’s share! Together, we can conquer poetry together in baby steps.
No need to stress out. Just slap some picture book or chapter book titles together and snap a photo on your smartphone. Please send it to scopenotes (at) gmail (dot) com and he’ll post it.
See? It’s easy! And let’s get our kids to do one too! After I post mine, I’m going to chase my kids down after school.
This poem is for my little boy who still thinks potty humor is hilarious.
Ode to a Potty Training Little Boy
p.s. Here are more great Spine poems!
From Sandra Wilson:
The kids in Margaret Ryan’s Class 5
The kids in Margaret Ryan’s Class 5A
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What a great way to make poetry writing more accessible!
Hi MaryAnne,
It feels like a cheat but I think it totally counts. It is fun to do which surprised me because poetry makes me nervous.
Oh…. I love this idea! Creative and fun!
Hi Twisterfish,
It was fun to “write” these. I hope you create one too!
I love the book spine poetry idea. I used it with my fifth grade classes as a way of having them locate books on various topics, create poems with the titles they pulled, reshelve the books, and create projects using the iMovie App. They read their poem and supplied the appropriate sound effects. I am in the process of getting them onto my website. They had a great time with the project.
Hi Margaret,
If your website is public, I’d love to link to your students’ spine poems. Please let me know if this is ok. Thanks!
Mia this is awesome. If you can do it so can I lol. We will attempt but I am not sure what we will come up with. We will try to pop one in to our post office book review. Stay tuned after 90 links lol. Cheers Julie
Thanks Julie,
I’d love to link to it as well! Please send me the link if that is ok.
Oh, how fun! I’ll see if I can get to this. Hmmm…the kids were just complaining a minute ago that they “don’t know what to do!” I wish I could EVER feel that way! lol Thanks for linking into the Kid Lit Blog Hop. 🙂
Thanks Renee,
If your kids make one, tell them that I’ll link to it or post it! Maybe we should get our kids to do this next week for Screen Free week! LOL!
This idea is too clever. I have to try this with my daughters this week. We could probably come up with some funny ones! (Visiting via The Children’s Bookshelf link-up.)
We did it, check out our blog post for Post Office Book Review link 81 on the blog hop, our Spine Poetry is at the end, hooray, we had so much fun doing it Mia, cheers Julie
That’s a wonderful idea – but currently all my books are in Polish or Russian – I don’t want you guys to break your tongues trying to pronounce the sounds! :))
This is so great! And you know I love potty humor. I think this will be Fen’s official homework assignment after school today.
Hi Jeanette,
If Fen does one and wants it posted, be sure to email it to scopenotes@gmail.com. It’s fun to see it on display on a popular blog. His blog, 100 Scope Notes, is now part of School Library Journal’s stable of bloggers that they pay so it will be seen by lots of people who will appreciate her efforts!
You are welcome to go to my web page. The link to the spine poetry will be on the iPad publications page when I get itfinished. I still have afew to upload to youtube, before I attach the link.
Margaret
Hi Margaret,
I’d love to. Can I please get the link when you are done?
Ooh, good idea! 😉 Thank goodness the warm sunny weather is finally here – at least they are outside a lot more. 🙂
Hi Renee C,
Yes, thank goodness though Winter frigid weather still seems to be upon us here in Boston. The radio DJ joked that we might do directly from Winter to Summer! Ugh!
What a great idea – and so much fun!
We didn’t do a lot of poetry when I was in school. I think I will incorporate this into our homeschool.
Thanks for the lovely ideas!
Thanks so much Lisa for the shout out on Google + today! Spine poems do look fun. I’m going to see if I can get my kids to write one too!
I finally got my projects loaded. The link is on my website – http://www.teacherweb.com/pa/saintephremschool/library – on the page iPad publications. I have them grouped together by the classrom numbers ( 5 and 5A). As with everything, some are better than others, but I can say that all of the kids had fun putting them together, and that was my purpose. You will notice that some of the spines have titles taped on to them. We are a working library. The kids made up the poems one week and by the time they went to take their pictures the following week, some of the books had been checked out. This was their solution.
Thanks so much Margaret. I just linked it to the post. What wonderful Spine Poems your students created! I love the audio!
We just did this too. I love spine poems!
Hi Erica,
I loved your Spine Poem post: http://www.whatdowedoallday.com/2013/04/spine-poetry-activity-for-kids.html !!
Funny!
This is such a clever fun idea.
I just pulled out a bunch of board books going to give it a try!
Hi Ann,
I found that using any genre of book helped. I ended up using mostly chapter books though initially I thought I could write the spine poem purely in picture books.
What a great concept! I’d never heard of it before – thanks for the introduction 🙂 Definitely going to do this with my girls.
Thanks!
Hi Marie-Claude,
I am going to try it with my kids too. I did a few myself first and it was surprisingly fun to “write.”
Cool idea! I kind of want to do this just for myself! 🙂
Hi Jessica,
Yes, adults will have fun doing this too! I’ll post your spine poems also!
This is a great idea! I want to try this with my kids, so that they will learn how to do poetry. Thanks