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Poetry Ambush 2022!

Recite a poem to an adult other than your homeroom or grade level teacher and get a popsicle.

The rules:

  1. One popsicle a week per student

  2. Popsicles will be distributed to qualifying students on Thursdays at lunch

  3. Poem Length

    1. Poems must be more than four lines long for students in the First through Eighth grades.

    2. Students in PreK and Kindergarten may recite four-line poems.

    3. Preschool students are invited to learn a poem of any length! Teacher

      Margaret will come and listen!

    4. You may recite a portion of a longer poem. 8 lines are the minimum but

      this opens the door to Langston Hughes, Amanda Gorman, Seamus

      Heaney, Nikki Grimes.....Mary Oliver, Kwame Alexander.

    5. Memorize an entire poem of more than 12 lines and you end up on the

      Shoutout Board

  4. Haiku and Sijo are the exceptions to the four lines rule. However, students may

    only do one of these over the four weeks of April

  5. Each week, you must choose a different poet and poem to memorize and recite

                 1. Students may only do one Shel Silverstein or one Jack Prelutsky over the course of the month

  1. When you have your poem memorized

    1. Politely ask an adult if they have time to listen.

    2. If the adult agrees, hand them a copy of the poem you will recite (if you

      write it down yourself, you may find this helps with the memorizing

      process. If you do this be sure to include the title and the poet!)

    3. Take a deep breath and try your best.

    4. The adult will decide whether or not you are 100% correct. If you are

      successful, you will be added to the list of popsicle receivers for the week.

      If you are not successful, you are welcome to try again the next day.

    5. If you and a friend are coming together to recite poems to the same

      teacher in the same time frame, you must each recite a different poem!

  2. Recess and morning drop-off are good times to find a teacher to “ambush”.

    Nurse Maggie, Teacher Margaret, Teacher Cindy, Nurse Kathy, Teacher Carol,

    Mr. Wayne, Teacher Donna are all good people to “ambush”

  3. We will chart everyone’s progress on the board outside of the OWLS lab.