Welcome to the 2015-2016 Program!

Hello Teachers and POL Coordinators!

We are off to a great start this year with 30 schools already registered to participate in the New Hampshire POL program! We have 4 new schools signed up so please remember this blog is one way to connect with one another, share resources, ask for advice, and support the overall success of this program! Leave comments, ask questions, and share your insights!

Registration ends November 2nd so if you know other schools who are hoping to join, please encourage them to sign up soon before we hit our 40-school maximum!

This year we have a big change to how students will be scored. The category, "level of complexity" has been eliminated and elements such as length of poem and language should now be considered as part of the "overall performance" of the recitation. The POL Judge's Guide provides more information on this and the NEA will be conducting a Judge Training webinar on Sept. 30th fro 3-4pm EST for those who can attend. You must register in advance!

The beginning of the school year is undoubtedly busy and so we wanted to kick this year off with some suggestions on how students can engage in poetry on their own, out in the community. This is a great way to encourage students to explore poems and poetry before you begin your POL lessons and classroom and school competitions.

• Encourage students to engage with poetry in their local or virtual community by: 
• Checking out The Frost Place event calendar
• Attending a poetry Hoot night in Portsmouth
• Joining an open mic night at Gibson's Bookstore in Concord, Tupelo in Londonderry, 
• Sign up for a Poem-A-Day to arrive in your email

These are all great ways for students to connect with poets and poems all year long! Do you have additional ideas? Please comment and share!

Teacher Orientation Resources

Once more - THANK YOU to everyone who was able to participate in a Teacher Orientation in person or by phone. We appreciate you making time for us and hope you found the session helpful!



As promised, I am sharing the resources we gathered from our Advisory Committee members and hope you will find them useful as you roll out Poetry Out Loud this year. We know many of you are also very experienced POL Coordinators so if you have resources of your own you'd like me to share with the group please send them over by email and I will update the list below.

Resource from Jason Lambert, CONVAL Regional High School

Resource 1 from Gordon Lang, Kingswood Regional High School

Resource 2 from Gordon Lang, Kingswood Regional High School 

Resources from Susan McClellan, Hopkinton Middle High School 
Resource from Amy Usinger, Coe-Brown Northwood Academy

Meme Generator
Meme Generator

Thanks and best, and wishing you all good luck with this year's program! 

Caitlin

Special Message from Cynthia Robinson

 NH Poetry Out Loud's previous coordinator penned this greeting to share...

"Hello POL teachers! Miss you all, and hope you're well! As I was talking with Alexandra today about semifinals and finals processes, I was reflecting on how very hard it is to predict the judging outcome. Some of you will remember that I did some digging into the data to discover how the points shake out. I had been under the impression that it was the Dramatic appropriateness score that was the X factor, but found it really was a combination of ALL of the criteria. Accuracy certainly counts big, but there really was no one criteria or judging point that consistently makes the difference between the top scores and the low scores. To me, this is a good thing, even though it makes the preparation hard. What it means is that your students DO need to prepare the whole package! To feel the poem, become the poem, know it cold, and express it clearly and confidently! And then....each presentation is received by a group of human judges, whose responses can not be completely predicted! At some point in the process students must let go of their own experience of the poem, and allow their audience to have their own experience of the presentation. The joy of POL is that it's all good! They are all already champions for taking that first step to share their poem with even just one person. Very best to you all. I hope to make it to a semifinal or the finals this year- always such a joy to feel the students' excitement for their poems! Cynthia

Regional Semi-Final Dates Confirmed!

Congratulations to the 41 schools who will be participating in NH Poetry Out Loud this year!  A full list of schools can be found on our website at:  www.nh.gov/nharts/programservices/POL/2015/

We are delighted to have four wonderful partners hosting our regional competitions in March:  Jean’s Playhouse on March 2^nd, NH Institute of Art on March 3^rd, Southern NH University on March 5^th and New England College on March 9^th.    Participating schools will receive notification of their assigned semi-final location this week.   Please call us with any questions!  Or email us at nhpol.coordinator@gmail.com.   Please remember to submit date of your in-school competition to us by December 5th and join us for Teachers Orientation on November 20^th or 24^th.

 

Writing Contests for NH Students

We are delighted to share three wonderful opportunities for NH students to participate in writing contests in the coming year.  Please share with you classes and colleagues.

NH Citizens for the Arts Essay Contest
Submission period: January 1 – March 15, 2015 Topic: “Why do the arts need to be in society?” Information at http://nhcfa.org/scholarship.html

Poetry Society of New Hampshire Contest
Submission deadline: April 30, 2015 Information at: http://poetrysocietyofnewhampshire.org/contest.html

Center for the Book: Letters about Literature Contest
A national contest from with the Library of Congress
Level 3 entries must be postmarked by 12-15-14
Levels 1 and 2 must be postmarked by 1-15-15
Information at: http://www.read.gov/letters/.html

Poetry Out Loud "Sizzle Reel"

Check out and share the attached video of the national Poetry Out Loud competition. It will absolutely generate buzz and build excitement for your school competition and the NH finals. Get involved in Poetry Out Loud! Be sure to visit www.poetryoutloud.org for other promotion and curriculum tips. And register today for the NH Poetry Out Loud Teacher Orientation on November 20th or 24th. Thank you for being a part of NH Poetry Out Loud.

Teacher Orientations

Registration is now open for NH POL Teacher Orientations - November 20th and 24th in Concord. Please register on Survey Monkey at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/KB5L833. Teacher's Guides and other materials will be available at this meeting. Teacher's Guides can also be downloaded at http://www.poetryoutloud.org/. We look forward to seeing you in November!