NPHS Library Weekly Update

April 3, 2020

Recreational Reading

This week we offered to let students borrow library books for the remainder of the school year. Students who were interested filled out an online form letting us know their reading preferences. It was a joy to see their happiness when they pulled up to the curb and saw the books especially chosen for them. (The main requests were for fantasy and science fiction) Pictured above are the books that they checked out.

National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month, and we hope that reading, writing, and listening to poetry can help us all find inspiration during what is sure to be a difficult month.

This week we bring you a collection of activities that we hope will help students use poetry to process their feelings, cultivate mindfulness and empathy, build community, and find voice. Working with poetry builds students’ social-emotional skills, which are critical to help them cope in a time of anxiety and essential to support their learning.

Reading poetry can help students identify, express, and process their emotions.

Ask students to browse the poems collected on Poetry 180, a website which contains a list of poems curated by former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins for high school students. Ask students to select a poem that captures something they are experiencing or feeling right now. Students can reflect on the poem they chose in their journals using the following prompt:

How do you feel when you read this poem?
What new words or images does the poem offer that help you express that feeling?

Listening to poetry can help students take a moment to cultivate mindfulness and empathy.

Ask students to pause each day to listen to poetry readings using either the Poetry Unbound podcast from On Being or the podcast The Slow Down, featuring poems selected by former U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith. As they listen to the poem, students can illustrate what they hear and write down key words. Afterwards, students can reflect on the following questions:

What experiences might have prompted the poet to write this poem?
How do you imagine the poet felt while writing this poem?

Poetry can also help your class build community.

Create a community poem with your students following the example of Kwame Alexander’s poem “Social Distance,” published through NPR. Show your students the two works of art in the NPR article, which were used to inspire this poem (or select any other images that evoke the current moment). Ask each student to submit one line of poetry responding to the images and assemble your class poem using the lines.

Writing poetry can help students document this moment of history-in-the-making.

Ask students to compose their own poems in their journals. Students may free-write poetry, or you can use the following strategies to help guide their writing:

Ask students to create a Found Poem using language from a news article they recently read.
Ask students to read George Ella Lyon’s poem “Where I’m From” and then to create their own poem inspired by this poem called “Where I am Right Now.” Students can use this handout as a guide. Just change the phrase in the first box from “I am from . . .” to “I am now . . .”
Ask students to read Pablo Neruda’s poem “Ode to My Socks” (“Oda a los calcetines”) and then to write their own “ode” to an object in their space, as a way of recording what they see and how they feel as they learn from home.