Poetry

We pause everyday for a poetry break in my classroom!

Poetry offers so many benefits and learning opportunities for students in all grades. So pause and enjoy the benefits poetry as to offer.

~Poetry reinforces learning throughout the curriculum!
~Poetry allows students the opportunity to appreciate poetry's ability to
communicate ideas in creative ways.
~Poetry can unlock student's own sense of creative communication.
~Poetry provides practice for reading fluently.
~Poetry also provides opportunities for students to read aloud to others
and practice their public speaking skills.

A new poem is passed out every week. Each student has a Poetry Folder to keep their poems and related work in. At the end of the year, they will have quite a collection of poems-some written by others and many written by themselves! Children are natural poets. We just need to give them opportunities to express themselves! Below is a sample schedule.
Monday	A new poem is passed out. Poems are selected to go along with our reading series (Macmillan McGraw-Hill), science, social studies, math or other special events or holidays. To familiarize themselves with the new poem, the children silently read the poem as part of their morning seat work. Fluency is modeled as I read the poem to the children. Fluency is practiced as we read the poem together. We always read the poem together the first day. Our pomes are kept in our STAR folders all week and then retired to our Poetry Folders in Friday. This way the children have them handy for class work or homework. Sometimes, the poems are sent home for fluency homework. The children must read the poem 4 times before Wednesday aloud to an adult. Parents are asked to sign the back of the poem each time the child reads it. MINI-Lessons: A quick lesson will accompany each poem. Lessons might be on a particular part of speech, vocabulary, punctuation, writing styles, etc...
Tuesday	The children are required to read their poem silently as part of their morning work. As a class, we read the poem together. We echo read, alternate boys and girls, even and odd lines, etc...
Wednesday	As part of our reading workstations (done during guided small group reading), the children are to read their poem with a partner and complete a poem related activity.
Thursday	Today's poetry activities might include a class reading, small group presentations, an art project, finishing up workstation work or student generated activities.
Friday	Today the children write their own poems to add to our Classroom Authors Book.

To celebrate all the young poets in my class, we have a Poet"tree" outside our classroom door that displays all of our poems. The children love to see their work being shown off!
Pictures coming soon.


Poem	Possible Mini-Lessons	Possible Activities
Who Has Seen The Wind? by Christina Rossetti	Personification	1. Write an additional stanza about the wind. 2. Using watercolors, paint a scene that the wind is seen. ArtsEdge has a neat lesson plan based on VanGogh's paintings and the Beaufort Scale for assessing wind.
School Pledge	Vocabulary Rhymes	1. Discuss: pledge, promise, respect, expect 2. Identify the rhyming words and create a list of additional words for that word family. 3. Create an illustration that shows what the poem means. We focused on sequence and time order words.
Planting by D. Wilmes	Plants Needs Calendar Rhymes Vocabulary Past Tense Words Verbs	1. We are studying plants, so this poem was perfect for a quick science review of what plants need. 2. Our math focuses on figuring out past and future dates using a calendar. We took the phrase "about a month ago" to jump into a math mini-lesson. We changed the phrase to "about a week/day/year/ # of days ago" 3. We identified the rhyming words and created lists of word that rhymed with our findings. 4. Sill was introduced as a new vocabulary word. 5. Identify the past tense words; determine the root word of each word found 6. Identify the verbs in the poem.
Odd and Even by Margot Wadsworth	Rhyming Odd and Even Numbers	1. Identify the rhyming words and create a list of other words that rhyme. 2. Decorate the border of the poem with even and odd numbers. Internet Game- Dragon Eggs
Continents Tour Author Unknown	Identifying Common and Proper Nouns Verbs	activity sheet coming soon!
Eight Little Reindeer Author Unknown
Rocks and Minerals Author Unknown	Identifying Nouns- singular and plural, verbs and adjective

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Last Updated on 09/23/2008

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