USING POETRY IN THE CLASSROOM - Part 3

It's about time, teachers, to describe more ways I use poetry in the classroom . . .

Poetry is absolutely wonderful for phonics instruction.  Consider the following poem:

By drawing your students’ attention to the rhyming words at the end of the lines, you can quickly establish an understanding of rimes.  For example, high rhymes with dry.  The rime, however, is spelled quite differently.  Similarly, crawl and fall illustrate 2 rime spellings for the same phoneme.    

Certainly, phonemic instruction with poems is not limited to rimes. I use the following poem to focus on vowel sounds:

I’m a big fan of anchor charts that remind students of phonemes we have studied. Using an enlarged copy of the poem, I ask the children to find words with the long /a/ sound.  We record them on a chart.  Then I have them find the words with the short /a/ sound and we record those words.  We collaborate to add more words to each side of the chart and, thereby, extend the learning.

The following poem could be used to work on consonant blends.

My learners are asked to look for and circle all the consonant blends they can find.  Students should be reminded that the blends are not limited to the beginning of words.  BTW, I require my students to work in pencil so that mistakes can be corrected.

Hopefully, it is now clear that the possibilities for phonics instruction are nearly limitless!

You may be interested in these poetry resources:

Family Reading Night

It's time, teachers, to celebrate National Children's Book Week.  

At my school, we have Family Reading Night in which families return to school in the evening. They are encouraged to visit up to 3 rooms where guest readers are sharing some favorite books. Our committee works hard to find some local celebrities to read.  We implore radio personalities, the weather girl on the local TV station, a player or coach from the U of I's athletic teams, ...  Ironically, the most popular reader is always the retired kindergarten teacher who touched so many of our children's lives and invoked their love of literature.

One of my favorite activities for National Children's Book Week incorporates my passion for poetry.  I share the following poem with my students:

I love to challenge my kiddos' creativity while helping them focus on the /ook/ rime.  To that end, I point out the lines,

          "Chefs read cookbooks,

          Pirates?  'Hook' books!

          Little kids read lift-and-look books!"

Working together, we think up other "-ook" books and readers.  For example, fishermen read bait and hook books.  Or, Chess players read rook books.  My students never fail to amaze me with the lines they create.   The all-time favorite line came from a student who had just returned from vacation in the Pacific NW.  Her line was "[Native Americans] read Chinook books."  (I inserted the pc term; she actually said, "Indians.")  Can you imagine???

If you are looking for a set of books that promote reading and a love of literature, I recommend the following:

• Aunt Chip and the Great Triple Creek Dam Affair by Patricia Polacco
• The School Mouse by Dick King-Smith
• Wild About Books by Judy Sierra
• Library Lion by Michelle Knudsen
• Born to Read by Judy Sierra
• Reading Makes You Feel Good by Todd Parr
• The Best Book to Read by Debbie Bertram & Susan Bloom
• The Best Place to Read by Debbie Bertram & Susan Bloom
• The Best Time to Read by Debbie Bertram & Susan Bloom
• Miss Brooks Loves Books (And I Don't) by Barbara Bottner

If you like this poem and activity, you can find more fall poetry, teaching points, skill lessons, and activities in my product, Poetry Possibilities - Fall.

It is available in my TpT Store or in my TN Shop.

You may also like:

Election Vocabulary

It's about time, teachers,  to work with election vocabulary.  

I love to sneak learning in with fun activities.  To that end, I cast my ballot for Election Hink Pinks, Hinky Pinkies, Hinkity Pinkities, and Hitinkity Pitinkities. With just a few days left until the national election, you have undoubtedly introduced vocabulary associated with it.  So now, you need to add the fun.  

If you are unfamiliar with Hink Pinks, they are riddles for which the answer must be a pair of rhyming words; each word having just 1 syllable (as do hink and pink).  Hinky Pinkies are riddles with rhyming word pair answers; each answer word having 2 syllables.  You guessed it, Hinkity Pinkities have 3 syllables and Hitinkity Pitinkities have 4 syllables.

Try these examples:

 

Skills involved in solving these riddles include: 

• vocabulary development
• parts of speech
• synonyms
• rimes
• Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS)

This product includes 24 cards with election themed clues and, of course, an answer key. The cards are copy ready; just print them on card stock (pink, of course), laminate, and cut them apart.  Now you are ready to place them at a center, use them as an anchor activity, grab a few for a sponge activity, and/or use them for whole group problem solving.  If your students have never tried Hink Pinks, et al, solve several together, modeling your thinking.

Were you able to solve the above examples? As you can testify, they are not quick and easy.  I recommend them for upper elementary and middle school.

And the answers are...

• vote tote
• tally rally
• President's residence
• politician opposition

Grab your copy of Election Hink Pinks, Hinky Pinkies, Hinkity Pinkities, & Hitinkity Pitinkities here.  They are only $2.50.

Remember to

  

Word Work, the Reading Recovery Way -- Pt. 7

It’s about time, teachers, … to begin working on rimes. 

At the white board, construct 3 known words that have the same onset, e.g. me, my, mom.  

Ask your student what is alike in these words.  Hopefully, she will notice that they all begin with m.  Ask, “Can you say another word that starts like that?”  Whereupon, you accept any word that begins with the same sound.  You need not be concerned about the correct spelling of the word.  That is, a word which is correctly spelled with /kn/ or /gn/ will be perfectly acceptable for the onset sound of /n/. 

On subsequent days, continue working with 1 letter onsets until you are sure the child understands the task and how words work when the onset remains the same.  The goal here is to bring your student's attention to the rime.

Now you are ready to use blends for onsets.  Following the same procedure, construct 3 words with the same initial blend, e.g. she, ship, show.  

Ask her to say another word that starts like that.  However, if she says sit or another word that has the /s/ sound, do NOT accept that word.  If necessary, over emphasize the /sh/ as you repeat the words you constructed.  If she still cannot produce a word with that blend, try again later, but in the same lesson, with a different onset blend.

Just as an aside, if your student struggles with distinguishing between blends and single consonants, you may want to have your speech & language specialist and/or an audiologist, do further assessments on her.

As always, you should proceed to the next task only after your student demonstrates mastery of this task.

It's nearly time for Halloween and in that spirit, my friend, Brian, at 

has boo-ed me. Don't fret that he's being a bully; it's a fun linky party. Brian's blog is well worth a visit. I am especially fond of his Positive Friday posts.  You will also appreciate the fall linky party he's running.

Now, here's the scoop on the I've Been Boo-ed linky party:

1. When you have been boo-ed, copy and paste the above picture and these "rules" into your blog post.
2. Give a shout out to the blogger who boo-ed you and link back to their site.
3. Share 3 - 5 October activities, books, products (yours or others'), and/or freebie(s) that you love.
4. Share the boo love with 5 bloggers.  Make sure you check this link to avoid boo-ing someone who has already been boo-ed.

Now it's time for me to share resources:

1. My emergent reader book, What the Little Ghost Saw on Halloween, has been extremely popular.  Don't miss out on this FREE book.                                                                                                                  
2. I also have a FREE Autumn Scarecrow Glyph.    It's fun and easy.                                                                                      
3. Lest you think I'm only focused on the littlest scholars, let me assure you that I'm always on the lookout for activities for intermediate students.  In my role as an enrichment specialist for the school, I was thrilled to find Lisa's Boo! Ha Ha! Math Centers for Bigger Kids at Fourth and Ten. She uses them to constructively engage the students who have mastered a math skill while she works with those who need more help.  That's a win-win!                                             

The time has come to share some Boo love ...

• Lisa from Fourth and Ten
• Tammy from Forever in First
• Storie from Stories by Storie
• Tammy at Groovy in 3rd
• Amy, Gretchen, & Shelley from 3 Teacher Chicks 

Word Work, the Reading Recovery Way -- Pt. 6

It's about time, teachers, for onset changes with harder analogies.  Begin by displaying the letters for a KNOWN word, plus another letter than can change the onset to make another KNOWN word.  

Say, "Make he.  Now change he to me."  After she has done so, ask her to run her finger under it and say it slowly.

In the same lesson, have the child construct a different onset change, for example, can / man.  

Always have the child run her finger under it, saying it slowly, to check that the sounds match the letters.

The next step is a little harder.  Make a known word, such as look.  Say, "You know this word -- look."  Give the student the letters for cook.  Instruct her to "make a word that is like look."  

Continue making analogies with onsets until the child demonstrates that she understands.

Next time, we will work with rimes.

In the meantime, I'd like to share some Pinteresting news.  Being a pragmatist, I decided to create 2 new boards on my Pinterest account especially for you, my readers and followers.  One board is a visual archive of my blog posts.  Because I’m a visual learner, it’s what appeals to me.  Hopefully, it does to you as well.

The other board is a collection of my free products on TpT.  

I’ve seen that several top sellers on TpT have done this and, since imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, they must be blushing!  When you have time, check these boards out.

Have time for a giveaway?  Who doesn't??  Enter for your chance to win nearly $200 in teaching materials at Rockin' Teacher Materials.  

Until next time...

It's about time for Halloween.  Have you picked up these Halloween freebies from my TpT store?

USING POETRY IN THE CLASSROOM – Part 3 – PHONICS INSTRUCTION

It's about time, teachers, to describe more ways I use poetry in the classroom . . .

Poetry is absolutely wonderful for phonics instruction.  Consider the following poem:

By drawing your students’ attention to the rhyming words at the end of the lines, you can quickly establish an understanding of rimes.  For example, dressed rhymes with best.  The rime, however, is spelled quite differently.  Similarly, cheer and hear illustrate 2 rime spellings for the same phoneme.  

Certainly, phonemic instruction with poems is not limited to rimes. I use the following poem to focus on vowel sounds:             

  

I’m a big fan of anchor charts that remind students of phonemes we have studied.  Using an enlarged copy of the poem, I ask the children to find words with the long /e/ sound.  We record them on a chart.  Then I have them find the words with the short /e/ sound and we record those words.  We collaborate to add more words to each side of the chart and, thereby, extend the learning.

/ea/ as long e	/ea/ as short e
sea hear eat bead	dead spread sweat deaf

I use the following poem to work on consonant blends.

Given the number of times it appears in this poem, /wh/ would likely be the focus of my instruction.  

Hopefully, it is now clear that the possibilities for phonics instruction are nearly limitless!

Building on phonemic awareness naturally leads to another important reading skill – using the context.  The following poem is great for exploring the sounds of /ow/:

                

After conducting a guided reading lesson on the 2 sounds of the vowel digraph /ow/ and making an anchor chart,

/ow/ as in know	/ow/ as in cow
grow snow thrown bow	how now frown bow

I have the perfect opportunity to introduce or review using the context to decide which sound of /ow/ is appropriate.

Next time, I will explore grammar lessons that can be taught through poetry.

If you would like more ideas for teaching with poetry, you may be interested in: