Book Spine Poetry: Building Poems One Book at a Time

​As promised, here's a look at the work our students did during our Book Spine Poetry Workshop in celebration of National Poetry Month.

Just to quickly recap, students worked in pairs to create a poem using the titles of books, or a "book spine poem," based on an historical era. The students had about fifteen minutes to comb the shelves of our very own Kilmer Middle School Library looking for titles that "sparked." Out of chaos, came creativity, as kids pulled books from the fiction shelves first and then moved onto non-fiction and biography. We arranged the poems in chronological order by historical era and did a poetry gallery walk. The students had fun, collaborated and learned from each other along the way. ​

Read our a few of our students' poems and see what you think!

Westward Expansion

Immigration

World War I

The Roaring 20s

This idea is easily adapted to any subject; you could have students create book spine poems about current events, novels, science concepts, the list goes on. We can't wait to see what ideas bubble up when you make this your own. Please be sure to report back to us,

And for inspiration take a look at the Book Spine Poetry war of words between the New York Public Library and Kansas City Public Library during last year's World Series. It's definitely worth a look!

Need more poetry ideas? Check out our previous poetry posts!

A Rhyme Until Next Time,​
Corey & Gretchen

---

You might also like:

• Can't Stop. Won't Stop: More Poetry! (April 13, 2016)
• National Poetry Month Ideas for Social Studies (April 3, 2016)