POETRY LITERACY CENTERS -- Part 5

It’s about time, teachers, that we covered poetry literacy centers.  I {heart} centers that have high interest for the kids and low effort for me.  That doesn’t happen overnight, but you can start to establish a poetry center and train you students to use it.  Then all you have to do is swap the poems and a few supplies.

Poems placed at the center must be familiar to the children.  You are just inviting problems if you post an unfamiliar poem.  Through shared reading, your students should have a clear understanding of the poem’s meaning or essence.  During those reads, ensure that your students understand the vocabulary and have sufficient background knowledge.  Ideally, the poem will be one that everyone can read independently.  If that is not possible, and I don’t believe it always IS possible, have a system whereby those who can’t read it can readily find a helper.

Poems placed at the center are in several forms:  individual copies for the students’ anthologies, an enlarged or poster version, and sentence strips with the poem copied on them.  A pocket chart is available for the latter.  Whisper phones are there, as well.

Have supplies available at the center so that students need not travel back to their desks to fetch them.  You will likely need scissors, pencils, erasers, crayons, colored pencils, and/or markers.  I also place a 3 hole punch at my center for students to use since we collect our poetry in 3 ring binders.

There are myriad activities for students to pursue.  As you can well imagine, the activities available at any one time, are limited and variable.  Following is an eclectic list of those activities:

          Read the poem with a buddy (EEKK)        
          Find rhyming words & highlight them

          Illustrate the poem

          Find patterns in the poem

          Identify word wall words in the poem & highlight or make a list

          Highlight words that are hard or tricky

          Complete a poetry Cloze exercise (fill in the missing words)

          Make a bookmark based on the poem

          Read with expression/read the punctuation

          Build poems from sentence strips

Create poetry with magnetic poem kits

          Memorize a poem

Perform a poem

Another set of activities at the poetry center is based on language arts skills.  The poetry center can reinforce skills currently under study or review some previously taught.  Some skill lessons to consider include:

          Rhyming words
          Onsets and rimes

          High frequency words

          Spelling list words

Vowel sounds   

Digraphs

Blends and clusters

Base words

Prefixes and suffixes

Punctuation

Rules of grammar

Parts of speech

Homonyms, synonyms, antonyms, homophones

For higher performing students in the early grades, as well as students in middle and upper grades, additional activities may focus on the craft of poetry.  Such activities include:

          Make text innovations
          Compose a poem

          Identify elements of a poem

          Explore figurative language

          Compare 2 poems using a Venn diagram or a T-chart

          Write a response to the poem

          Conduct an author study on the poet

In my next post, I will explore some of the activities in more depth.

You may also be interested in:

All of these products are available in my TpT Store or my TN Shop.

March Poetry Freebie

It's about time, teachers . . . to add some March poetry to your students' portfolios.  My series of Poetry Possibilities on TpT now includes March themed poetry.  

Here is a free preview:

These poems each come with a teaching point and an eclectic collection of mini-lessons and activities.  The readability of the poems makes them appropriate to both primary and intermediate classrooms.  The skill lessons allow for remediation of older students or differentiation for younger ones.  Concepts and skills included in this 33 page unit are described here:

Stop by my TpT store to check out Poetry Possibilities for March.  I think you will like them.

100th Day of School

If February isn't the most crowded month for teaching themes (Groundhog Day, Presidents' Day, Black History Month, Valentine's Day), I don't know what is.  In my district, the 100th Day of School also falls in Feb.  I typically immerse my students in that theme for the entire day with centers, activities, and book links.  In our whole group times and in some reading groups, I like to present poetry about this special day.  For example,

My free product on TpT --

-- has 4 poems with Possibilities accompanying each of them.  The Possibilities are an eclectic group of teaching ideas that range from poetic devices to guided reading lessons.  For the above poem, the Possibilities are:

To get all 4 poems and the Poetry Possibilities I created for each one, go here.  Remember, it's FREE!!  Enjoy.

If you like this product, you may wish to look at my other Poetry Possibilities products for February:

Black History Month Poetry Possibilities or Poetry Possibilities -- February.

Groundhog Day 3.0

One of the things I love to do with my students is immerse them in poetry because it offers so many teaching possibilities. Naturally you can focus on poetic structures and poetic devices.   But have you ever used poetry to teach reading skills? Because poetry is usually short and the message concise, it's a perfect venue for studying vowel sounds, contractions, punctuation, parts of speech, syllables, rimes, inflections, ....  The  possibilities are almost endless.  It's always good practice to relate these skills to what is being read.  Practicing skills in isolation may transfer to reading skill building; then again it may not.  

Each poem has reading skills already built into it.  All you have to do is look at it with a "reading skills eye."  Thus, if the poem is replete with a particular consonant blend, use it in a guided reading lesson about that blend.  If the poem has a sprinkling of contractions, devise a review lesson about contractions using the poem.  As an example, look at the following poem, noting that it has several compound words in it.

Due to the structure of a poem, it is easier for young children to locate the compound words.  If you reproduced this poem on sentence strips for use in a pocket chart, that would facilitate  identifying the compound words as a group.  With a little magic and masking tape, you could make the compound words come apart.  Alternately, you might focus on the punctuation and how it helps the reader to read with expression.  Or, you might choose to conduct a mini-lesson on the inflections -ing and -ed.

As a reading specialist, I highly recommend using poems for guided reading lessons and review lessons.  It has always been a favorite activity of my remedial students if for no other reason than they had less text to conquer.

While wearing my other hat, enrichment specialist, I developed Poetry Possibilities for my colleagues with teaching points identified for them.  For example, the Possibilities  for the above poem include:

As item #3 indicates, poetry can also be a launchpad for differentiating instruction.  Gifted and talented students deserve and require our attention, but it can be quite taxing to provide extensions for them.  I have dedicated most of my career to creating challenges for G/T children.  Most of my products on TpT reflect that commitment.  I hope you will go here to check out my critical and creative thinking products.

If you are interested in more seasonal poems with teaching points and skill suggestions, visit my TpT store here for February poems and possibilities.  You may also be interested in Black History Month Poetry Possibilities.  Just a word of caution: reading poetry is principally about creating enthusiasm for reading.  Take care not to defeat that goal by always turning poetry reading into a skill drill.

                        

Black History Month

It's about time, teachers, to get ready for Black History Month; a month to celebrate the accomplishments of Black Americans who have done so much to make our lives better.

Assigning your students to report on noteworthy people is fine, but, let's face it, a little boring.   Couple that with the time constraints we all face for prescribed curricula, and you have a common conundrum: how can I blend what I WANT to do with what I HAVE to do?  In the case of Black History Month, I find that poetry is a perfect way to solve it.   For example, the following poem gives you the heart of Matthew Henson.

But just reading a poem doesn't seem worthy of the study of Black History. So, I try to incorporate required curricula with some creativity. I call it Poetry Possibilities, just to remind myself that I don't have to do EVERYTHING every year. Rather, I can choose what is most appropriate to this year's class, and what appeals to me at this time. Honestly, sometimes I do all of the listed ideas; sometimes I just copy the poem and share it with my class.

As you can see, one of the things I could assign my students to do is design a postage stamp just for Matthew Henson. I was impressed to learn that there are more than 60 U.S. stamps honoring black Americans. Check it out for yourself at: 

http://library.thinkquest.org/10320/Stamps.htm. 

For Black History Month, I have collected 14 poems, which means you can use 1 poem per day for nearly 3 weeks. Each is accompanied by a teaching point covering a variety of skills, including: types of poetry, poetic devices, poetic structures, choral reading, text innovations, creative writing, and a host of reading skills. Because I am committed to differentiated instruction, I have included enrichment opportunities and research topics. You will also find graphic organizers, art projects, and book links.

This is just one piece of my Black History Month poetry unit, Black History Month Poetry Possibilities. This unit has a cousin unit that is absolutely FREE, called Poetry Possibilities -- Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. I hope they help to make your Black History study more enjoyable.