Valentine Poetry: Love Poems for the Unloved

Last year I blogged about the book Vulture Verses by Diane Lang. I had the opportunity to listen to her  at my favorite bookstore. This book is absolutely PERFECT for Valentine's day, and I wanted to share the writing activity that I have my kiddos do after reading the book!

In case you didn't see my previous post, the book, Vulture Verses: Love Poems for the Unloved, is a collection of "love" poetry written to creatures who are generally "unloved."
(Vultures, bats, mosquitos, spiders, bees... you get the picture)

In addition, each poem mentions why the creature is actually helpful to us and our environment.
They are seriously packed with so much information and the poems are great!

Here's the back of a postcard that she passed out to promote her book...
How great of an idea is this?!

After I read aloud the book to them, my students get to come up with their own "love poem" for an unloved creature. I usually bring out books and magazines about different creatures, and this year since we have iPads we will be using those as well! I tell them to include why the creature is important to us in their poem.

 After they have written and edited their rough draft, I give them their paper for the final draft! There is space for them to write the poem and draw an illustration to go along with it!

After the poems are all finished and illustrated, I bind them together in a class book! I am so excited that my students this year will have these poems to read as inspiration for their poetry. In addition, it gives my students a purpose for writing and they are excited to know that their books are going to be displayed in my classroom for future 4th graders to read!

Click on the picture below to get this from my TPT store!

It is FREE for a limited time!

AND if you have Amazon Prime (can't believe there was ever a time when I didn't have it!), then you can order this book and get it before Valentine's Day!