Prepping Poetry Journals, a Free Poem and the Scavenger Hunt Winners!!!

Hi all! It's Susan again from Thank God it's First Grade!

I like to incorporate poetry as much as possible into our weekly routine and an easy way for me to do that is during our phonics block.

After we learn a new sound, I will give my students a poem to practice reading and identifying that sound:

These are the steps I follow when my students get a new poem:

1.) I read the whole thing aloud while they track the print.

2.) Students echo-read each line after me.

3.) Students whisper read the poem to themselves as I walk around and listen.

4.) Students read independently and circle all words with the sound we are studying.

*While most of the poems in our poetry journals are phonics poems, we add in plenty of holiday poems throughout the year as well and circle rhyming words, different punctuation, and other fun things we might be studying!

In order to keep these journals all year long, my friend Lindsey from back in Vegas showed me this trick that helps me prep my journals before the year even starts!

I snag these 3 pronged folders from Walmart (for only 25 cents a piece). Then I roughly count out 20-25 pieces of paper and put them in. Whenever my students receive a new poem, they just use their glue sticks and glue their poem right on top of a blank piece of paper. We use both sides of the paper so at the end of the year we have a journal of 40-50 poems!

I used to hole punch each poem individually and have my first graders *try* to put them in the prongs and it just became a huge waste of time and I would run around like a crazy teacher trying to help everyone.

This way is MUCH easier. Also if you are preserving your glue sticks like we try to, I teach my students to glue "an x inside a rectangle" on the blank page and put their new poem on top. Six quick strokes and voila their poem is in!

The -an word family poem you see above is part of a phonics poetry pack that I am working on, but while I am finishing I thought I would offer that poem for free! Just click below and download the preview to snag the poem:

UPDATE: My poetry pack is up and completed:

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Now onto the WINNERS of our scavenger hunt! It was a blast looking through all the pictures that were submitted. You all had SO much fun with it! Take a look below to see if you won any of the amazing prizes:

Congratulations!!!! Emails will be sent out shortly :)