Bringing my love of poetry
to the classroom is natural and no timeline or common schedule will stop me
from teaching with poetry. You see, you
can work on Common Core Standards while teaching with poetry. In fact, I believe poetry can make many
lessons easier than prose because…
- Poetry is fun. It’s fun to listen to and fun to read. Poetry with rhythm and rhyme is simply engaging for children.
- Poetry uses an economy of words. Thus, it looks different. When I was teaching Title I, my students really brightened up when I presented a poem rather than prose. I have no empirical data to support this, but I believe it was because that economy of words and the extended white spaces made the reading less intimidating.
- When teaching with rhymed poetry, the rhyme pattern makes the reading at least somewhat predictable. Young children crave and thrive on predictability.
- The structure of poetry makes it ever so much easier to teach concepts and skills. If, for example, you wanted to teach compound words, finding them in a poem is much easier than searching through a page of prose.
- Whether it’s because of the condensed message, or the engaging lilt of a poem, or both, I believe comprehension is easier for struggling or beginning readers.
Undoubtedly, I could extend
this list of reasons, but the purpose of this blog message is to describe how I
use poetry to teach. So, let me begin by
saying that poetry appreciation is NOT my primary focus. When presented with enthusiasm, students will
naturally come to appreciate verse (unless, of course, it’s Beowulf!)
That said, I consider the
anthologies we construct throughout the year to be a form of poetry
appreciation. My Title I students
certainly prized their anthologies and would practically hound me for
reassurance that they could, indeed, take their anthologies home at the end of
the year to keep forever.
We collect our poems in 3
ring binders. I keep the binders on a
bookshelf when we are not actively using them.
This keeps them from being gobbled up by the messy desk gnomes and reduces
the chaos in those desks. It also sends
a subtle message that poetry is special.
In general, I photocopy the poems
we put in the anthologies, rather than asking the students to copy them in their
own handwriting. This reflects a respect
for the timelines I am expected to follow.
As a reading specialist, I simply didn’t have the time to ask my
students to copy a poem. Moreover, some
kiddos can’t read their own writing.
In a similar vein, much of
the poetry has clip art on it. Again,
this expresses respect for teaching time.
Nevertheless, those little first graders still want to know when they
can color the pictures. (That, BTW, is a
great activity for my students when weather does not allow them to go out to play at lunch recess.) Some poetry, however, is art free. There are poems that just demand to be
illustrated by the students. Those
illustrations can tell me something about the accuracy of their comprehension.
Collecting poetry in
anthologies is just 1 component of poetry’s role in my classroom. In my
next post, I will describe using poetry in guided reading groups.
If you like to use poetry in the classroom, you may be interested in:
