During the month of April, we celebrate National Poetry Month. It was launched by the Academy of American Poets in April 1996. According to Poets.org, “National Poetry Month is a special occasion that celebrates poets’ integral role in our culture and that poetry matters. Over the years, it has become the largest literary celebration in the world, with tens of millions of readers, students, K-12 teachers, librarians, booksellers, literary events curators, publishers, families, and of course poets, marking poetry’s important place in our lives.”
This month, Information Literacy Specialist, Mrs. Ramirez, hosted classes in the library to learn about Blackout Poetry. Blackout Poetry is when you take a written piece of text from a book, newspaper, or magazine and redact words, in order to come up with your very own poem. Students learned the history of Blackout Poetry then chose the text they wanted to use. The next step was to circle meaningful words or phrases. Then they drew an image outline or arrows for reading the text, if needed. The last step was to blackout everything that was not wanted. Students enjoyed this activity. They said it is a much easier to write a poem in this manner. We have some pretty talented poets at Aldine Ninth Grade.
