The Poetry Friday Anthology
The Poetry Friday Anthology was the dream child of Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong, who have compiled other great collections. In their introduction, they advocate reading poetry first and foremost for pleasure, but also point out ways that reading poetry fulfills the Common Core standards for kindergarten through grade 5. Each poem is accompanied by five discussion questions, which relate to language arts skills, personal experiences, or comparisons to other poems. I love how easy this makes it for teachers to add poetry the day, providing enough poems for five minutes on each Friday of the school year. These poems are written by dozens of well-known poets, and many are full of humor and enchanting twists, providing ways for students to bond over the language, the topics, and some original silliness. You can see samples on the Poetry Friday Blog.
I’m happy to have two poems included. Here’s one followed by a picture of an inspiration (which Peter took when we were walking a few days ago).
Good Dog! Bad Dog!
Good dog never wakes us up.
Yip! Bad dog jumps on the bed.
Good dog shakes for a biscuit.
Bad dog snitches jam and bread.
Good dog chews dog toys.
Bad dog chews the chair.
Good dog comes when called.
Bad dog doesn’t care.
Good dog snuggles by my feet.
Bad dog steals my heart.
No, that’s our good dog!
Some days we can’t tell them apart.
Copyright © 2012 Jeannine Atkins. All rights reserved.
For Poetry Friday links, please visit Irene Latham at Live Your Poem, where she’s featuring a collaborative zoo poem (I wrote a goat couplet) to celebrate her new novel. which has a zoo setting: Don’t Feed the Boy.