Great Idea from Scholastic Blog: Spine Poetry

I wrote an earlier post on my daughter’s first poetry unit featuring the Josie’s Poems.

As a mom/internet concierge, I also found a great poetry idea on the Scholastic blog called spine poetry.
Simply scan your entire book collection and choose and lay books on their sides and stack them so the titles can become words or lines in a collective poem.

I love this idea because:
1.) it requires very little advanced planning time for a busy teacher
2.) utilizes library resources (Go Libraries! Go Libraries!)
3.) transfers well with online resources

There are wonderful examples by Megan on the Scholastic website.

Here is one I “composed”

Happiness Is
Eternal Echoes
Forward From Here
On the blue shore of silence
The band that played on

Emily and Einstein
Look Homeward, Angel 

Ways to differentiate the Spine Poetry assignment can include:
1. changing the number of books in the spine poetry, either decreasing or increasing depending on ability.
2. let students use connecting words {on, in, the, and, etc…} in {brackets}
3. take digital pictures of the final spine poetry sculptures using digital cameras or iPhones
4. researching a “sound-bite biography” of the authors.
5. confining the spine poem to works of poetry only
6. include books with titles in different languages
7. accompany the poem with illustrations

Students can also go to online book collections or online libraries, snip the photos of book spines and stack using a photo image program or website such as Pic Monkey.