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April Info and News
April is National...
Poetry Month, Black Women's History Month, Autism Acceptance Month and School Library Month among other things! We have lots of celebrate and think about this month as we start to enjoy this warmer weather and hopefully are still relaxed from Spring Break.
Amanda Gorman
I can think of no better way to honor Black Women's History Month or Poetry Month than with the groundbreaking writer, and the first National Youth Poet Laureate of the United States, Amanda Gorman. Her new book, The Hill We Climb, is the first book of poetry ever to debut at No 1 on USA Today's Best Selling Books list, and she is the first poet to be featured on the cover of Vogue. You can read the Vogue article here: https://www.vogue.com/article/amanda-gorman-cover-may-2021, and hear her read "We Rise" below.
Poetic interlude "We Rise" by Amanda Gorman, Youth Poet Laureate #WFGM20
18 Black (Women's) History Heroes You May Never Have Heard Of (click on picture)
PBS: Explore Black Women in History (click on the picture)
National Poetry Month
From Gilgamesh to DMX, poetry is one of the enduring ways that we express ourselves. National Poetry Month is a great time to expose kids to the enormous variety of poetry that exists and to even write some of your own. Blackout Poetry is a really popular way to take an existing text and turn it into a poem by circling words that are part of your poem and marking everything else on the page out or making a drawing. I'll link to a google slideshow that explain it more fully, and also a digital blackout poetry site. If you click the picture with the suggestions, you'll find a number of other ways to infuse poetry into the classroom, including seesaw activities.
Bonus: Billy Collins reading The Lanyard, one of my favorite poems
Billy Collins - The Lanyard
National Autism Acceptance Month
According to the Autism Acceptance website, autism is the fastest growing developmental disorder in the US, and 1 in 54 children are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. What does that mean for us? It means that we've all taught children on the autism spectrum and will teach even more in the coming years. It's important that we learn all we can to welcome neurodivergent kids of all kinds into our classrooms where they can find comfortable, supportive learning environments. We have a number of people in the building who are great resources for this, and I've also linked the Autism Acceptance website below (click the picture).