{"id":7716,"date":"2014-02-05T12:01:41","date_gmt":"2014-02-05T17:01:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/?p=7716"},"modified":"2014-02-05T10:13:46","modified_gmt":"2014-02-05T15:13:46","slug":"whats-black-and-white-and-red-all-over-newspaper-poetry-for-middle-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/2014\/02\/whats-black-and-white-and-red-all-over-newspaper-poetry-for-middle-school\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s Black and White and Red All Over? Newspaper Poetry for Middle School"},"content":{"rendered":"

Finding programs that are exciting for middle school students can be very difficult.\u00a0 But, in my library we have a solid group of middle schoolers (grades 5 \u2014 8) who participate in our community service organization (Junior Friends), who act in reader\u2019s theatre and participate in book discussions too.\u00a0 Each holiday season we host a holiday party for the kids with games, crafts, and of course lots of food!<\/p>\n

This year I decided to try something a little different; newspaper poetry.\u00a0 Now I know what you\u2019re thinking\u2026 are middle school kids really going to be interested in creating poetry for fun?\u00a0 Well, I have found that this group of kids love to be creative, enjoy creating crafts, and have amazing imaginations, so poetry for them is not too much of a stretch.<\/p>\n

I threw together all the supplies before they came for the party and then let them loose.\u00a0 All I needed was a bunch of old newspapers (we recycle ours at the library so I grabbed a huge stack from the recycle bin), I also grabbed scissors, glue sticks, some crayons, and construction paper in a variety of colors.\u00a0 This was a great project because I already had everything in the library I needed and it took very little explanation.<\/p>\n

With 25 kids in attendance, craft supplies were everywhere, but once they settled down with their newspapers, they were all hard at work.\u00a0 Some kids were working by themselves, some in pairs or groups and I could here them calling out words they were looking for in hopes someone would help them.\u00a0 This program worked really well because the kids were able to chat with friends while they worked and if I\u2019ve learned anything working with middle school kids, it\u2019s that they are very social!<\/p>\n

We had other things planned for our programs so the kids had only about 20 minutes to work on their newspaper poetry, which definitely wasn\u2019t enough time.\u00a0 If I were to do this program again, I would create a poetry program (maybe during National Poetry Month) and offer the kids an hour of time to create their masterpieces with a little time at the beginning to show them some books in the collection about poetry as well as offer time at the end for sharing.\u00a0 Some of the kids really enjoy being center of attention and I like to encourage this confidence when the kids gain a boost of confidence by receiving positive attention from peers and from adults in the community.\u00a0 These poems could also be used as a display on a bulletin board for the library as well!<\/p>\n

***********************************************<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a>
Photo courtesy of guest blogger<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Our guest blogger today is <\/i>Laura Arnhold. <\/em>Laura is a Children\u2019s Librarian at the Upper Merion Township Library<\/a> in King of Prussia, PA.\u00a0 She\u2019s lucky enough to work with kids from birth to eighth grade and has fun everyday!\u00a0 When she\u2019s not working, she loves to be in the kitchen cooking for friends and of course reading as much children\u2019s literature as she can!\u00a0 Laura can be reached at larnhold@mclinc.org<\/a><\/em><\/em><\/p>\n

Please note that as a guest post, the views expressed here do not represent the official position of ALA or ALSC.<\/i><\/p>\n

If you\u2019d like to write a guest post for the ALSC Blog, please contact Mary Voors, ALSC Blog manager, at\u00a0alscblog@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Finding programs that are exciting for middle school students can be very difficult.\u00a0 But, in my library we have a solid group of middle schoolers (grades 5 \u2014 8) who participate in our community service organization (Junior Friends), who act in reader\u2019s theatre and participate in book discussions too.\u00a0 Each holiday season we host a holiday party for the kids with games, crafts, and of course lots of food! This year I decided to try something a little different; newspaper poetry.\u00a0 Now I know what you\u2019re thinking\u2026 are middle school kids really going to be interested in creating poetry for fun?\u00a0 Well, I have found that this group of kids love to be creative, enjoy creating crafts, and have amazing imaginations, so poetry for them is not too much of a stretch. I threw together all the supplies before they came for the party and then let them loose.\u00a0 All…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[134,38],"tags":[370],"class_list":["post-7716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guest-blogger","category-programming-ideas","tag-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7716\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}