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Mix It Up Poetry - Poetry Tools to Put in Your Pocket!

Here are a selection of apps and websites, vetted by librarians and educators, for use in school libraries, classrooms, and public libraries.

Getting Started

Blackout Poems- grade 3 and up
http:// bit.ly/2plkPen

Save some pages from damaged or discarded books for blackout poetry. Part art project, part puzzle, and part writing assignment, a blackout poem utilizes the works already printed on a page to create a yet-to-be-written work of the poet's imagination. Cover up works with a black market so that only  the chosen words on a page remain readable.


Button Poetry's Classroom Friendly Poems- Grade 5 and up
https://buttonpoetry.com/category/blog/

The classroom friendly  poems sectio offers videos of poets reading their work aloud- without any adult language or age-inappropriate content. A great source for vetted poems performed by a diverse range of poets.


Poetry Out Loud- Grade 6 and up
https://www.poetryoutloud.org/

A joint effort between the National Endownment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation, this program encourages students "to learn about great poetry through memorization and recitation."
Their YouTube page showcases young award-winning orators reciting poems from memory and includes guidance and best practices for public speaking.


 Protesting Through Poetry via NPR- grade 7 and up
https://www.npr.org/2018/01/15/578105649/protesting-through-poetry

Author/poets Kwame Alexander and Nikki Giovanni join NPR's Morning Edition host Rachel Martin to discuss the power of poetry as protest.

Apps

 Poemhunter - Grade 7 and up
Free, Android and iOS

Have a poem sent to your smartphone everyday, if you choose. Within the app, users can tap on the shuffle icon to discover a random poem or poet. More than one million poems are archived.

Blackout Bard- Grade 7 and up
Free, Android and iOS

This is a cool app and users who stick with  it will be pleased. Enter or copy-and-paste text in the app, then highlight words you want to keep.  Once chosen, users select different backgrounds or photos to cover text. Once satisfied, the poem can be saved or shared. This is a fun way to create blackout poems in a digital environment.

ImageQuote- Grade 6 and up
Free, iOS

Users can create short poems in different fonts against colorful backgrounds to post on social media, save or share with friends. The free version has six options of backgrounds and fonts.


THF Haiku- Grade 9 and up
Free, iOS

The Haiku Foundation's mission is to "archive our first century of English-language haiku." Haiku is shown in a random order ( a shake of your phone will change the poem).  Some 1,500 haiku are contained within the app. When users find one, they can tap the share button to save, text, email, pin to a Pinterest board, or send ot WhatsApp and other social media channels.

SLJ April 2018- Stacy Dillon









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