Poem Possibilities

Using grants to foster

collaborationBrenda Cowe

School Library Media Specialist

Purpose of Grant Request

Foster collaboration between school libraries, public libraries, and community members.

Expose students to the excitement of writing, publishing, and performing poetry for a community audience.

Funding Source

Ithaca Public Education Initiative

Overview of Grant Project

4th grade students worked with a local poet to create original poems.

Student work was published on LULU.com in an anthology.

Students read their original poems for a community audience at the public library.

Participants

Ithaca City School District

-Brenda Cowe, Judy Blood

Tompkins County Public Library

-Patricia Lia

Local Poet-Jay Leeming

Goals of the Project

Students will gain a deeper understanding of the role of poetry as an art form and the role it can play in understanding themselves and their place in the world around them.

Student personal empowerment will increase through the publication of their original poems and public performance of these poems.

Student English Language Arts (ELA) skills will improve in the areas of reading, writing, listening, and speaking for literary response and expression, information and understanding, and social interaction.

Goals of the Project

Students will gain a greater understanding and level of familiarity and comfort with arts performances and

activities.

Students will gain appreciation of the poetry collection in their school library and public library and will view reading poetry as recreational reading.

Benefits to Community Partners

The local collaborating poet will gain greater community exposure for their work through working directly with children, teachers, parents, and local libraries. The audience for their work will therefore increase.

The local community partner will benefit from greater exposure of their services and programs, through the public reading, hopefully engaging children and parents that had not previously participated in said programs and services. The audience for their services will therefore increase.

Innovative Features

Student work will be published at very low cost using print-on-demand technology.

Anyone can purchase a copy of the book from the website.

Description of Activities

Met with teacher and poet to discuss workshop schedule, related lessons, and workshop content.

Two workshops held with local poet Jay Leeming and Judy Blood’s 4th grade class

Students continue poetry lessons in class and in the library, tying it to the library collection of poetry.

Description of Activities

Students selected two of their poems for inclusion in the anthology.

Compiled student poems into one manuscript and published on LULU.com.

Marketing for poetry reading completed. Students presented a public poetry

reading at the Tompkins County Public Library during National Poetry Month 2007.

Marketing

Flyers for parents, teachers, and public Listservs for teachers and librarians School and Library Websites Weblog created for the project Press releases for local newspapers School newsletter articles

Evaluation

Students, parents, collaborative partners were surveyed post-program

Evaluated outcome measures such as increased poetry awareness, increase in enthusiasm for poetry, participation in arts events, organization of project

Evaluated poetry circulation increase

Successes

Increase in poetry circulation Increase in student awareness of the various

types of poetry and the role it can play in their life Increase in student and parent familiarity with arts

events in the community Increase in knowledge of the public library and its

resources Increase in self-confidence of students Parent attendance at 95% for the public reading Increased collaboration between school library,

public library and arts partner Student poems published in professional format