244: Creative Winter Poetry Activities for ELA

<p><!-- wp:paragraph --></p> <p>The week before winter break can be a great time for wintery poetry.</p> <p><!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --></p> <p>A mini-unit like this is flexible, seasonal, and easy to fit around whatever else is going on in those final (frantic? fun? festive?) days. You may have favorites of your own to incorporate, but today I just want to share three quick and creative ideas for your toolkit.</p> <p><span style="font-size: 18pt;"><strong>#1: Winter Holiday Lipograms</strong></span></p> <p><!-- /wp:paragraph --></p> <p><!-- wp:paragraph --></p> <p>Ever since Melissa Alter Smith of Teach Living Poets introduced me to lipograms, I've been so intrigued by this poetic form. A lipogram is simply a poem in which a poet avoids a certain letter (or letters) of the alphabet, but I love the way Melissa had her students avoid all vowels except one.</p> <p><!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --></p> <p>For this project (<a href= "https://spark-creativity.ck.page/c9338cdf76">grab the free curriculum I designed with Melissa here</a>), students will choose one vowel and then write a holiday poem using only that vowel. There are three quick brainstorming activities they can do to help them generate enough words with their chosen vowel to write a poem (it's harder than it may sound!).</p> <h1><span style="font-size: 18pt;">2: Winter Poetry Tiles</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> <!-- wp:paragraph --></span></h1> <p>If you've ever played with magnetic poetry on your refrigerator, you already have the idea of digital poetry tiles. These kits are so easy to use to create poems, and they help students relax and move beyond writer's block.</p> <p><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --></span></p> <p>All you need is a Google Slide and a bunch of individual word images to move around on that slide. You can make it as complex or as simple as you like.</p> <p>Get the full walkthrough in the full shownotes at nowsparkcreativity.com. </p> <p>Designing these kits