Like most librarians, I am always looking for ways to use our weeded books and old magazines for projects. The reality of working in a school library is that there are A LOT of old books. Even the librarians who weed every year usually have a backlog of books that are 30-40 years old that they need to slowly get rid of.

As librarians, you usually don’t have too many choices for getting rid of old books. You can slowly through them in the garbage, a little at a time. You can try to give them away to staff and students, but I feel like the books then always make their way back to the library. Sometimes your school district has a “warehouse,” that will pick up and store your old books. Or you can look tirelessy for someone or someplace to take them for recycling.

But wait, there’s something else you can try to do with at least some of your old books and magazines; turn them into materials for new projects. This is exactly what I did when it was time to celebrate National Poetry Month in our school.

I came up with two projects; one to use for old books and one for old magazines.

Poetry Collage Activity

Overview: In this activity, students use words from magazines to create their own poem.

Materials: Old Magazines, scissors, glue, paper

Activity Instructions:

1. Explain to students that they will be using magazines to create their own poetry.
2. Tell students that they will need to go through the magazines and cut out 10-15 words that they like. They may like the words themselves, the colors or the font.
3. After cutting out the words, arrange them on the table to have them make sense. They may need to go back to get connecting words such as: and, in, the, etc. to help it make sense.
4. After students have created their poem, they can glue it onto paper.

*Note: A lot of students will come up with a line or poem in their head after cutting out one word. They will then go searching for specific words that they want. This is a fine way to do it but it will take a whole lot longer.

Blackout Poetry

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Overview: In this activity, students will use selected words from one page from an old book to create a poem.

Materials: Old or damaged books, Black Out Poetry PowerPoint, Markers (Black and colored), pencils

Activity Instructions:

1. Explain to students what Blackout Poetry is. I used this PowerPoint that I found online and edited to walk them through the steps of how to create the poem.
2. Pass out a pile of pages ripped out of books to each table and have the students begin by underlining words on their pages that they could use in their poems.

Even students who really don’t like poetry will enjoy these two activities! I would love to hear how you have used these ideas in your classroom! Please comment below to share with others!