Poetry Notebooks!

I promised to post about my kiddo's poetry notebooks last week, and have finally gotten to it! Poetry notebooks are a new addition to my literacy time this year, thanks to my new co-workers for telling me about them1 I use regular old spiral notebooks for this, mainly because they are not expensive and hold up through the school year.

My students keep their poetry notebooks in their book bins, which they use every day during read-to-self time (or silent reading for non-Daily 5 people). They keep poems (mostly relating to thematic units) that we have learned throughout the year. We typically learn them together on chart paper during Morning Meeting or Shared Reading. This is excellent practice for emergent readers. The kids really feel like they are reading the poems, and they get rhyming exposure, too. Double win!

We sometimes use the poems in our poetry notebooks for practicing other reading skills, like color words and sight words. In the fall, we were learning color words. Students colored each fall color word in this autumn poem to help them recognize and remember the words.
As the year progresses, the poems get longer and harder! Some students struggled with this one on the 100th day, but they thought it was awesome that the poem had 100 words in it!
Pictured below is a much easier poem from early in the school year.

Here is a poetry notebook cover freebie I created if you'd like to use it for your own poetry notebooks! Click on the picture to download via Google Docs.
Also, I have a new item up for sale on Teachers Pay Teachers. It is a Rainbow Writing Numbers Handwriting Practice Pages. My Rainbow Writing ABC set has been one of my more popular items on TpT, so I hope you find this sister set useful, also! It is only $1.50 for numbers 0-10. Click the preview picture to check it out at TpT!
PS- I am 3 away from 100 followers... a fun give-away is coming soon! Where would YOU to win a gift card to? Target? Lakeshore Learning? Barnes and Noble? Comment and let me know!