Poems in the Home

Charming High School Chapbooks

Today was the last day of classes and exams start Monday. I have a lot of marking to do in the next week, then report card marks, work habits and comments to input, then more marking of provincial exams. However, I don't feel too overwhelmed this weekend because the marking consists of these beautiful little chapbooks written by my grade 8 and 9 students. 

After weeks of writing and revising poems, I booked the computer cart and showed them how to align their pages landscape wise and choose two columns.  Then how to photocopy two sided to make book like pages. I gave them card stock paper for the covers and showed them how to bind them with embroidery thread I bought. Some ran out of time and used the long armed stapler, which is OK, too.

A lot of the poem assignments are from the old classic, Rose, Where Did You Get that Red? And others are from Georgia Heard's books about teaching poetry writing.  Maybe because we read so many poems as a class, maybe because they know I am a poet, maybe because they are young and full of imagination, they took to writing and constructing poetry books naturally.

These books are pretty to have in the house, and I know it won't feel like a chore to mark them. Each has a BC English Curriculum rubric tucked inside so I won't mar the books themselves with marks. They all need them back Monday for their portfolio exam.