Young Poets at Ocracoke School

The hour long event began at 2:00 and was open to all students and staff of the school as well as parents and community members. The entire second floor of the elementary building was transformed into a hotbed of literary and poetic creativity. There was an area called “Sidewalk Poetry” by the stairwell, inspired by Shel Silverstein, where students could write poetry on paper with sidewalk chalk. The hallway walls were decorated with “All About Me” poems written by students and information about poetry and its technical features. Any 2nd floor visitor got the sense that these students not only learned about what poetry is but also immersed themselves in it.

Each classroom hosted a different theme of poetry and displayed some of the students’ original work. Ms. Paige’s 3rd grade classroom’s theme was nature. They displayed the 3rd graders’ work on Haiku poems, which are meant to be about nature. Their artwork was beautiful and a perfect accompaniment to the Haikus.

Ms. Ballance’s 4th grade had Dr. Seuss as their theme. The students had taken an in-depth look at Dr. Seuss and were asked to select a quote from one of his many books and explain what his words meant to them.

The 5th grade classroom of Ms. Bittner had the theme of Color poems. This classroom had a display of color poems by all of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students in a beautiful rainbow array. To wrap up this event, each classroom invited the parents and family members to a presentation about the work the students did and the poems that they created.  It was stunning to see how much effort was put into this event by the students and how much creativity they have.

The first ever (but maybe annual?) poetry slam was a great success!

The students were proud to show off their hard work and I overheard numerous parents expressing surprise and delight at the results of it. This was an exciting and unique event at Ocracoke School. All of the students and teachers should be proud to have been a part of it.