Poetry Writing is one type of writing that can expand across genres and subject areas. This spring writing unit will focus on poetry while integrating earth and environmental themes throughout the month. A selection of wonderful books leads this learning.
Mentor Texts
If you have never read the Adventures of a Plastic Bottle, I highly recommend it for your Earth Day studies. It is fantastic! This book reinforces personal narrative writing like Diary of a Worm and it teaches students how a bottle is made, recycled, and made again.
Our Big Home is a beautiful book about the earth written in poetic verse. It celebrates all the things that make the earth a wonderful place to live.
Human Footprint is an eye-opener! It is a great book to show students (and us!) how much garbage etc. only ONE person makes and gives some suggestions on how ONE PERSON can reduce their human footprint. It’s a great feeling to know that one person can make a difference.
Compost Stew is a very simple A B C book on items that go into a compost bin. It is simple, yet effective for teaching about composting and the resulting soil that can be used for growing things.
This writing unit is the perfect unit for all things spring: Earth Day studies, poetry, and plants.
Click here to see more of this full-year teaching unit.
There is also a year-long overview you can view here to see if this unit is the right fit for your developing writers.
What a perfect way to combine April's literary focus on poetry with its Earth Day focus on the environment! I'm late to discover it, but thank you so much, Shelley, for including my COMPOST STEW as a mentor text in this terrific Hooked on Writing unit, which I look forward to adding to the book's resource page on my website.