Book Spine Poetry: Using the Titles of Books to Write Poetry

I love poetry and writing poems is one of my favorite activities to share with students. It's important to let them know that inspiration can be found anywhere...including on the spines of their favorite books.

Above is a shorter version of a poem about this winter created from the titles of books found in our classroom. Here's the full version:

Let it snow
Wintergirls

Snow bound, the long winter
Linger...forever

Misery

Delirium


If you have had a winter like ours (and chances are you have!), you may feel the same way!

Have your students try to come up with different combinations of titles to create a book spine poem. Even if the words don't quite fit, they can drop or add their own words to their creation and, presto! There's a new poem!

Poetry shouldn't be hard; it shouldn't be a chore. Allow your students to have fun with it and experiment. They'll remember poetry as a positive experience and won't be as reluctant to write later. My "Write Like a Poet" pack helps guide students through the process by looking at many famous poets and poems and their style before tackling the writing process. It's a fun unit your students will enjoy.

Game On! Look at me!

Throwing smoke point blank

Gold dust

More than this

Champion

Thirteen reasons why, looking for Alaska

And the mountains echoed the call of

the wild

Blood red road caught at sea

Let's pretend this never

happened

Speak

more than this

call it

courage

lessons learned

The eye

of minds

the valley

of amazement

gone girl

and the mountains

echoed

Another variation of the first poem...

Let it snow 

Wintergirls

Snow bound, the long winter

Linger...forever

Misery

Delirium

HUSH

Book Spine poems are just one of the many activities you'll find in my "Write Like a Poet" pack. It also covers free verse, sonnet, snapshot, acrostic, haiku & modern haiku, sonnets, chance, black-out (redacted), magnetic, online, and word cloud poems. In addition, it helps students create metaphors, similes, personification, and use onomatopoeia effectively in a poem. It is completely editable so you can customize the almost 200-page presentation and handouts to suit the needs of your students. (And this might be one of my all-time favorite lessons in my TpT store.) ENJOY!

The presentation is completely editable and includes numerous examples.

All handouts are editable!