Dec 14, Wednesday

Ted Scheu The Poetry Guy

Chickering Fourth Graders had an amazing week with Ted Scheu "That Poetry Guy!"

A children's poet known for his humor, Ted Scheu is a former elementary school teacher from Vermont who finds poetry "endlessly amazing" and admits to behaving "a teenie-weenie-jelly-beanie-bit young" -- which may be why he can connect with young writers. Scheu specializes in getting students revved up about their on writing through gentle guidance and confidence-boosting. The week-long poetry workshop began with a grade-wide assembly to get students to think about writing and seek inspiration for an original poem. Then, three days of in-class workshops broke the process down into: making visual and sensory comparisons, writing "from the heart," and the writing-and-revising process. The most exciting part of the workshop series was the culmination of the week in which Fourth Grade students shared their original poems with the entire class. "Ted Scheu was awesome" said Fourth Grader Lindsey Gilfeather. "It changed my poetry life because I never knew there was so many different types of poems to write. List poems, riddles, and non-rhyming poems. Out of all of the poems I have ever written, I have never written like this!"