Two Creative Poetry Activities

School Library Journal's Fuse 8 blog encourages us to use some creative activities to celebrate Poetry Month.  These ideas would be ideal in an advanced classroom.  They use techniques some may find unfamiliar and unconventional, but that could manifest as fresh appeal to students and broaden their interest in poetry.  If you're looking to journey beyond the haiku, try out these two Fuse 8's tips:

• The Newspaper Blackout Poem, created by artist Austin Kleon.  His website shows tons of examples.  The basic idea is to build your own context to words in newspaper articles by obscuring all the other words with a dark marker.  This activity allows students to reveal their own short poems, proverbs, aphorisms and other messages.

• Fibonacci Poems, which creator Greg Pincus affectionately calls "Fibs," are a good way to integrate math in a poetry lesson.  This challenging activity requires students to use the Fibonacci sequence to construct their poem.  If math and numbers appeal to your students, I think they'd like this!  

I like these activities because they help students focus on using a few words to great effect.  

Fuse 8 has other creative poetry activities listed (including poems about food and daunting 20 consonant poems), so check out the link!