Poet-Tree Center

My boyfriend was doing some home remodeling for a family and they were throwing away an old artificial tree.  He brought it home to me instead because he said it looked like something I would put in my classroom. Of course, he was right and this is how the Poet-Tree was born!

I have a wide collection of poetry in this center.  Some of it is in book format, some of it is folded-up posters that I keep in plastic sleeves, and I also print out individual poems and store them in plastic sleeves.  I have activities hanging on the tree using black metal binder clips.  I also have packets of activities and poems that hang on the wall. 

I include a variety of reading levels, types of poems, poetry topics and themes, lengths, and interests.  Children can act out the poems, choral read them with a partner, create props to do a dramatic reading, or create a song from the poems.  They can illustrate the poems and write new titles for the poems.  I have grammar related activities where students have to use highlighters to identify nouns, verbs, adjectives, and pronouns.  For lower level readers they circle consonant blends and different vowel spellings.  A favorite activity is one where the poem has underlined words and the students have to rewrite the poem using synonyms or antonyms in place of the underlined words.