By James Logan Healthy Eagle reporters | Reporters from the Healthy Eagle are excited to announce the winners of the Logan Elementary poetry contest. Students from second to fifth grade submitted their wonderful poetry focusing on the theme of kindness, empathy, and caring for your community.
In the winter issue of the Healthy Eagle, the reporters interviewed Ms. Trapeta Mayson, poet laureate and founder of the Poetry Hotline. “Everyone can be a poet,” she said. “All you have to do is write down your feelings.
This gave reporters an idea: Why not hold a school-wide poetry contest?
The rules were simple: Write your own poem. Try your best. Write about kindness, empathy, or caring for the community. No rhyming necessary! The reporters worked hard to promote the poetry contest throughout the school by creating posters and hanging them in the hallways, making a poetry contest bulletin board, making announcements during Inclusive Welcome meetings, and publishing the guidelines in the winter issue of the Healthy Eagle newspaper. Technology teacher Ms. Fine worked with students to type their poems. Students were given a month to work on their poetry and submit it to Ms. Caillot.
The response was overwhelming. Thirty-two poems submitted by students in second, third, and fifth grades. Entries ranged from cinquains (a five-line poem or stanza), and acrostic to rhyming and non-rhyming.
Healthy Eagle reporters were the judges of the poetry contest. Ms. Caillot read through all of the poems. Then they would discuss the poems that “stuck out” in their minds. Ms. Caillot and the class would re-read the poems a couple of times.
“Once we decided on the top five poems in each grade, the students would vote and the two poems with the highest votes won first and second place,” Ms. Caillot said. This process took three days to make sure that every poem was given equal attention.
We are pleased to announce the following winners and runners-up for each grade. The winner will receive a tablet and the runner-up will receive a poetry book.
Fifth grade:
Winner: Carlee Coleman
Runner-up: Brielle Edwards
Third grade:
Winner: Kha’mari Arti
Second grade:
Winner: Kay’sir Armstrong
Runner-up: Kysir McCullough
Thank you to everyone who participated in our poetry contest. Everyone put in a lot of effort and did an amazing job. All of the poems blew us away!
