Do you hate to teach poetry? Do you want your students to learn and enjoy poetry? Try these simple ways to learn how to teach poetry...
A few years ago (maybe five or six) our state standards changed for reading, pretty dramatically. I know all of you who have been through...
Today I am excited to welcome Kim from English Oh My as our guest blogger. She has some great ideas for teaching students to comprehend poetry in a manageable way. Enjoy! Happy April, and Happy National Poetry Month! Poetry is a timeless genre, and it is a part of most English Language curriculum. When I tell […]
Other Posts in This Series: Post 1: The Setup Post 2: A Foundation with Reading Strategies Post 3: Mysteries Post 4: Informational Texts Post 5: Biographies Post 6: Poetry Post 7: Fables During my poetry genre, one of my main goals is to work on reading fluency. I want to give students some strategies to help them become more fluent readers. I also want them to see that as they read, read, and re-read a text (or poem), they become more fluent with it. This will be important as we move on to folktales next. Poetry is also a great tool for teaching so many important literary devices! As we are reading poems in our classroom, we are also learning to write poems - integration at its best! We begin our study by reading poems. I teach my students to think about reading poems - Where should they pause? What words need to be emphasized? What words should be read softly? Students learn to "mark" their poems to practice reading them. Marking a poem is just as it sounds - drawing marks or letters to remind you of how to read - we use slashes for pauses. We put one slash for a line break, another slash for punctuation, etc. Students will put an "s" above words to read softly, or an arrow above a word they want to stretch out. The options are endless, but they love to add these symbols and create a key for their meanings. We do several together before they start marking their own poems. It's fun to see how each child interprets the poems and mark them differently....it lets their personalities shine! :) This is the perfect unit for pulling out our whisper phones. You can purchase these phones through many educational outlets, or make your own out of PVC piping as I did (well, actually, the hubs made them). I spray painted them and numbered them just to lessen the germs being spread. Students are amazed at how they can read through one end in a whisper voice and then hear themselves so clearly through the other end! All of my little poets can be reading at the same exact time without disturbing others! We use a lot of poems from a lot of different places for our poetry unit - dig through all of your resources and make the most of what you already have! A couple of my favorite resources include: ...the You Read to Me, I'll Read to You books. These are oh so perfect for partner fluency practice!! They come in many different genres that I use with my other genre units, too (fables, tall tales, fairy tales)! <3 ....the Take Me Out of the Bathtub series. These poems are make-your-tummy-hurt funny and the kids eat them up! Plus, they're written to tunes of familiar songs, making it easy for students to find the rhythm for reading them fluently. #winwin As, I mentioned, we're also writing poems as we read them. I like to expose my students to TONS of poetry styles, while also encouraging them to write freestyle poetry. Gooney Bird is So Absurd is the PERFECT read-aloud during this time since Gooney's class is learning some of the same poetry styles as my students! Of course, in perfectly unique Gooney-fashion, Gooney Bird teaches the class to "warm" their brains with unique hats while writing poetry. We learn to write many, many styles of poetry and students choose their favorite ones to compile into a poetry anthology. We publish these into books - what special keepsakes! As we're reading and writing all of this poetry, we're discovering many literary devices. We create a lot of craftivities to help cement this devices into our brains - let's face it...they're tricky! These serve as references on our walls, as well as decorations for our "Poetry Picnic" celebration at the end of our unit. Alliteration with tongue twisters Onomatopoeia with poetry pops Rhyming with watermelon rhymes More alliteration with allite-rainbows Vivid vocabulary with vocab baskets Similes with Simile Sandwiches Personification blooms with our flowers Rhyming and/or Syllable review with Sandwich Poems Metaphors with Metaphoric Family Poems Whew! We work hard during this genre study! Of course, we want to showcase all of our hard work, so we invite our families in for a poetry picnic! We rearrange all of the tables in our classroom, set out all of our projects and a few little treats, and add some finishing touches! Students add acrostic poem name tents so families will be able to find their seats easily when they arrive. We add triangle poems to our napkins at our place settings and we're ready for our big event! Students each get a chance to be in the spotlight as they read some of the favorite poems they wrote during our study. Our class also performs some of our favorites (from other authors) as a class. Then, students return to their own desks to share all of their fun projects and poetry anthologies with their families. What a fun day of celebrating our learning! Units I've created to supplement this genre study may be found below. The Poetry Styles Unit includes a PowerPoint and individual signs of original poems I wrote for all of the styles that I teach my students. These are a great model to use when teaching the poetry styles and also serve as a reference throughout their writing. I also created a second edition called Poetry Styles II as a special request for an intermediate teacher. I do not use these styles in my classroom, but if you teach upper-grades, you may find it beneficial for your students. Poetry Pizzazz includes all of the fun craftivities for literary devices and also templates for publishing the poetry styles I teach. Weekly Poem work is my newest addition that I am in LOVE with! This is actually something I now use all year long to spiral poems and reading strategies with my students. They will be experts at reading fluency in no time with this year-long practice! I'll be back soon to share my final three genre studies - folktales (fables, tall tales, and fairy tales).
Other Posts in This Series: Post 1: The Setup Post 2: A Foundation with Reading Strategies Post 3: Mysteries Post 4: Informational Texts Post 5: Biographies Post 6: Poetry Post 7: Fables During my poetry genre, one of my main goals is to work on reading fluency. I want to give students some strategies to help them become more fluent readers. I also want them to see that as they read, read, and re-read a text (or poem), they become more fluent with it. This will be important as we move on to folktales next. Poetry is also a great tool for teaching so many important literary devices! As we are reading poems in our classroom, we are also learning to write poems - integration at its best! We begin our study by reading poems. I teach my students to think about reading poems - Where should they pause? What words need to be emphasized? What words should be read softly? Students learn to "mark" their poems to practice reading them. Marking a poem is just as it sounds - drawing marks or letters to remind you of how to read - we use slashes for pauses. We put one slash for a line break, another slash for punctuation, etc. Students will put an "s" above words to read softly, or an arrow above a word they want to stretch out. The options are endless, but they love to add these symbols and create a key for their meanings. We do several together before they start marking their own poems. It's fun to see how each child interprets the poems and mark them differently....it lets their personalities shine! :) This is the perfect unit for pulling out our whisper phones. You can purchase these phones through many educational outlets, or make your own out of PVC piping as I did (well, actually, the hubs made them). I spray painted them and numbered them just to lessen the germs being spread. Students are amazed at how they can read through one end in a whisper voice and then hear themselves so clearly through the other end! All of my little poets can be reading at the same exact time without disturbing others! We use a lot of poems from a lot of different places for our poetry unit - dig through all of your resources and make the most of what you already have! A couple of my favorite resources include: ...the You Read to Me, I'll Read to You books. These are oh so perfect for partner fluency practice!! They come in many different genres that I use with my other genre units, too (fables, tall tales, fairy tales)! <3 ....the Take Me Out of the Bathtub series. These poems are make-your-tummy-hurt funny and the kids eat them up! Plus, they're written to tunes of familiar songs, making it easy for students to find the rhythm for reading them fluently. #winwin As, I mentioned, we're also writing poems as we read them. I like to expose my students to TONS of poetry styles, while also encouraging them to write freestyle poetry. Gooney Bird is So Absurd is the PERFECT read-aloud during this time since Gooney's class is learning some of the same poetry styles as my students! Of course, in perfectly unique Gooney-fashion, Gooney Bird teaches the class to "warm" their brains with unique hats while writing poetry. We learn to write many, many styles of poetry and students choose their favorite ones to compile into a poetry anthology. We publish these into books - what special keepsakes! As we're reading and writing all of this poetry, we're discovering many literary devices. We create a lot of craftivities to help cement this devices into our brains - let's face it...they're tricky! These serve as references on our walls, as well as decorations for our "Poetry Picnic" celebration at the end of our unit. Alliteration with tongue twisters Onomatopoeia with poetry pops Rhyming with watermelon rhymes More alliteration with allite-rainbows Vivid vocabulary with vocab baskets Similes with Simile Sandwiches Personification blooms with our flowers Rhyming and/or Syllable review with Sandwich Poems Metaphors with Metaphoric Family Poems Whew! We work hard during this genre study! Of course, we want to showcase all of our hard work, so we invite our families in for a poetry picnic! We rearrange all of the tables in our classroom, set out all of our projects and a few little treats, and add some finishing touches! Students add acrostic poem name tents so families will be able to find their seats easily when they arrive. We add triangle poems to our napkins at our place settings and we're ready for our big event! Students each get a chance to be in the spotlight as they read some of the favorite poems they wrote during our study. Our class also performs some of our favorites (from other authors) as a class. Then, students return to their own desks to share all of their fun projects and poetry anthologies with their families. What a fun day of celebrating our learning! Units I've created to supplement this genre study may be found below. The Poetry Styles Unit includes a PowerPoint and individual signs of original poems I wrote for all of the styles that I teach my students. These are a great model to use when teaching the poetry styles and also serve as a reference throughout their writing. I also created a second edition called Poetry Styles II as a special request for an intermediate teacher. I do not use these styles in my classroom, but if you teach upper-grades, you may find it beneficial for your students. Poetry Pizzazz includes all of the fun craftivities for literary devices and also templates for publishing the poetry styles I teach. Weekly Poem work is my newest addition that I am in LOVE with! This is actually something I now use all year long to spiral poems and reading strategies with my students. They will be experts at reading fluency in no time with this year-long practice! I'll be back soon to share my final three genre studies - folktales (fables, tall tales, and fairy tales).
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.2 Timothy 3:1…
Other Posts in This Series: Post 1: The Setup Post 2: A Foundation with Reading Strategies Post 3: Mysteries Post 4: Informational Texts Post 5: Biographies Post 6: Poetry Post 7: Fables During my poetry genre, one of my main goals is to work on reading fluency. I want to give students some strategies to help them become more fluent readers. I also want them to see that as they read, read, and re-read a text (or poem), they become more fluent with it. This will be important as we move on to folktales next. Poetry is also a great tool for teaching so many important literary devices! As we are reading poems in our classroom, we are also learning to write poems - integration at its best! We begin our study by reading poems. I teach my students to think about reading poems - Where should they pause? What words need to be emphasized? What words should be read softly? Students learn to "mark" their poems to practice reading them. Marking a poem is just as it sounds - drawing marks or letters to remind you of how to read - we use slashes for pauses. We put one slash for a line break, another slash for punctuation, etc. Students will put an "s" above words to read softly, or an arrow above a word they want to stretch out. The options are endless, but they love to add these symbols and create a key for their meanings. We do several together before they start marking their own poems. It's fun to see how each child interprets the poems and mark them differently....it lets their personalities shine! :) This is the perfect unit for pulling out our whisper phones. You can purchase these phones through many educational outlets, or make your own out of PVC piping as I did (well, actually, the hubs made them). I spray painted them and numbered them just to lessen the germs being spread. Students are amazed at how they can read through one end in a whisper voice and then hear themselves so clearly through the other end! All of my little poets can be reading at the same exact time without disturbing others! We use a lot of poems from a lot of different places for our poetry unit - dig through all of your resources and make the most of what you already have! A couple of my favorite resources include: ...the You Read to Me, I'll Read to You books. These are oh so perfect for partner fluency practice!! They come in many different genres that I use with my other genre units, too (fables, tall tales, fairy tales)! <3 ....the Take Me Out of the Bathtub series. These poems are make-your-tummy-hurt funny and the kids eat them up! Plus, they're written to tunes of familiar songs, making it easy for students to find the rhythm for reading them fluently. #winwin As, I mentioned, we're also writing poems as we read them. I like to expose my students to TONS of poetry styles, while also encouraging them to write freestyle poetry. Gooney Bird is So Absurd is the PERFECT read-aloud during this time since Gooney's class is learning some of the same poetry styles as my students! Of course, in perfectly unique Gooney-fashion, Gooney Bird teaches the class to "warm" their brains with unique hats while writing poetry. We learn to write many, many styles of poetry and students choose their favorite ones to compile into a poetry anthology. We publish these into books - what special keepsakes! As we're reading and writing all of this poetry, we're discovering many literary devices. We create a lot of craftivities to help cement this devices into our brains - let's face it...they're tricky! These serve as references on our walls, as well as decorations for our "Poetry Picnic" celebration at the end of our unit. Alliteration with tongue twisters Onomatopoeia with poetry pops Rhyming with watermelon rhymes More alliteration with allite-rainbows Vivid vocabulary with vocab baskets Similes with Simile Sandwiches Personification blooms with our flowers Rhyming and/or Syllable review with Sandwich Poems Metaphors with Metaphoric Family Poems Whew! We work hard during this genre study! Of course, we want to showcase all of our hard work, so we invite our families in for a poetry picnic! We rearrange all of the tables in our classroom, set out all of our projects and a few little treats, and add some finishing touches! Students add acrostic poem name tents so families will be able to find their seats easily when they arrive. We add triangle poems to our napkins at our place settings and we're ready for our big event! Students each get a chance to be in the spotlight as they read some of the favorite poems they wrote during our study. Our class also performs some of our favorites (from other authors) as a class. Then, students return to their own desks to share all of their fun projects and poetry anthologies with their families. What a fun day of celebrating our learning! Units I've created to supplement this genre study may be found below. The Poetry Styles Unit includes a PowerPoint and individual signs of original poems I wrote for all of the styles that I teach my students. These are a great model to use when teaching the poetry styles and also serve as a reference throughout their writing. I also created a second edition called Poetry Styles II as a special request for an intermediate teacher. I do not use these styles in my classroom, but if you teach upper-grades, you may find it beneficial for your students. Poetry Pizzazz includes all of the fun craftivities for literary devices and also templates for publishing the poetry styles I teach. Weekly Poem work is my newest addition that I am in LOVE with! This is actually something I now use all year long to spiral poems and reading strategies with my students. They will be experts at reading fluency in no time with this year-long practice! I'll be back soon to share my final three genre studies - folktales (fables, tall tales, and fairy tales).
Dream Song by Walter de la Mare from Poems for Boys and Girls I simply love the imagery in this poem by British poet Walter de la Mare and Lois Maloy has illustrated this book in such a beautiful way. Sadly, I could not find anymore information about Lois. The little bats and the owl make this a perfect poem for this month of Halloween posts! The image for 'Dream Song' has been enhanced using the Pixlr, photo app. Hope you all enjoyed the quirky poem! ~~ Diane ~~
REAL world practice for standardized tests!!! My most popular worksheets this time made specifically for the "Other" genres. STAAR practice worksheet which works with just about any piece of these genres. This will help your students practice using the difficult vocabulary presented by STAAR. We use this worksheet on most of what we read, and it builds an understanding of these words. SEE my other worksheets for fiction, non-fiction, and comparisons of different passages. POETRY - Two organizers and stem questions for use with any poem! HISTORICAL FICTION - Fill in organizer and stem questions designed for HF. DRAMA - Fill in organizer and worksheet with stem questions. SCIENCE FICTION - Fill in organizer. Also helpful for: AIMS CST CAT CSAP FCAT SSI CRCT EOCT GHSGT GAA IES TERRA NOVA HSA ISAT ITBS ISAT IST CCSS CAS MEA MSA MCAS MEAP ELL MCAII MCT NESA NECAP NJASK PSSA NECAP PASS STEP TCAP TAKS SDAAII HSPE WESTEST WKCE WKCE PAWS LEAP AIMS CSAP FCAT NAEP ISAT MEAP NJASK ELA Common Core NECAP STEP TCAP MSP WKCE PAWS CCSS story maps author's purpose
Other Posts in This Series: Post 1: The Setup Post 2: A Foundation with Reading Strategies Post 3: Mysteries Post 4: Informational Texts Post 5: Biographies Post 6: Poetry Post 7: Fables During my poetry genre, one of my main goals is to work on reading fluency. I want to give students some strategies to help them become more fluent readers. I also want them to see that as they read, read, and re-read a text (or poem), they become more fluent with it. This will be important as we move on to folktales next. Poetry is also a great tool for teaching so many important literary devices! As we are reading poems in our classroom, we are also learning to write poems - integration at its best! We begin our study by reading poems. I teach my students to think about reading poems - Where should they pause? What words need to be emphasized? What words should be read softly? Students learn to "mark" their poems to practice reading them. Marking a poem is just as it sounds - drawing marks or letters to remind you of how to read - we use slashes for pauses. We put one slash for a line break, another slash for punctuation, etc. Students will put an "s" above words to read softly, or an arrow above a word they want to stretch out. The options are endless, but they love to add these symbols and create a key for their meanings. We do several together before they start marking their own poems. It's fun to see how each child interprets the poems and mark them differently....it lets their personalities shine! :) This is the perfect unit for pulling out our whisper phones. You can purchase these phones through many educational outlets, or make your own out of PVC piping as I did (well, actually, the hubs made them). I spray painted them and numbered them just to lessen the germs being spread. Students are amazed at how they can read through one end in a whisper voice and then hear themselves so clearly through the other end! All of my little poets can be reading at the same exact time without disturbing others! We use a lot of poems from a lot of different places for our poetry unit - dig through all of your resources and make the most of what you already have! A couple of my favorite resources include: ...the You Read to Me, I'll Read to You books. These are oh so perfect for partner fluency practice!! They come in many different genres that I use with my other genre units, too (fables, tall tales, fairy tales)! <3 ....the Take Me Out of the Bathtub series. These poems are make-your-tummy-hurt funny and the kids eat them up! Plus, they're written to tunes of familiar songs, making it easy for students to find the rhythm for reading them fluently. #winwin As, I mentioned, we're also writing poems as we read them. I like to expose my students to TONS of poetry styles, while also encouraging them to write freestyle poetry. Gooney Bird is So Absurd is the PERFECT read-aloud during this time since Gooney's class is learning some of the same poetry styles as my students! Of course, in perfectly unique Gooney-fashion, Gooney Bird teaches the class to "warm" their brains with unique hats while writing poetry. We learn to write many, many styles of poetry and students choose their favorite ones to compile into a poetry anthology. We publish these into books - what special keepsakes! As we're reading and writing all of this poetry, we're discovering many literary devices. We create a lot of craftivities to help cement this devices into our brains - let's face it...they're tricky! These serve as references on our walls, as well as decorations for our "Poetry Picnic" celebration at the end of our unit. Alliteration with tongue twisters Onomatopoeia with poetry pops Rhyming with watermelon rhymes More alliteration with allite-rainbows Vivid vocabulary with vocab baskets Similes with Simile Sandwiches Personification blooms with our flowers Rhyming and/or Syllable review with Sandwich Poems Metaphors with Metaphoric Family Poems Whew! We work hard during this genre study! Of course, we want to showcase all of our hard work, so we invite our families in for a poetry picnic! We rearrange all of the tables in our classroom, set out all of our projects and a few little treats, and add some finishing touches! Students add acrostic poem name tents so families will be able to find their seats easily when they arrive. We add triangle poems to our napkins at our place settings and we're ready for our big event! Students each get a chance to be in the spotlight as they read some of the favorite poems they wrote during our study. Our class also performs some of our favorites (from other authors) as a class. Then, students return to their own desks to share all of their fun projects and poetry anthologies with their families. What a fun day of celebrating our learning! Units I've created to supplement this genre study may be found below. The Poetry Styles Unit includes a PowerPoint and individual signs of original poems I wrote for all of the styles that I teach my students. These are a great model to use when teaching the poetry styles and also serve as a reference throughout their writing. I also created a second edition called Poetry Styles II as a special request for an intermediate teacher. I do not use these styles in my classroom, but if you teach upper-grades, you may find it beneficial for your students. Poetry Pizzazz includes all of the fun craftivities for literary devices and also templates for publishing the poetry styles I teach. Weekly Poem work is my newest addition that I am in LOVE with! This is actually something I now use all year long to spiral poems and reading strategies with my students. They will be experts at reading fluency in no time with this year-long practice! I'll be back soon to share my final three genre studies - folktales (fables, tall tales, and fairy tales).
In honor of World Poetry Day on March 21st I thought I'd post a quick review activity for poetry terms / figurative language. You can use this worksheet as review for a quiz or as an introduction to poetry terms (just work on one term at a time). I often have the students work on their own examples and write them on the board at the front of the room. My students (I've done this with grades 8-12) love the chance to write on the board and share their poetry prowess with others. I usually have 4-5 whit eboard pens out at a time and once a student has written their example on the board, they must pass the pen to a new student. There's less pressure on the students if there's more than one person writing on the board at the same time, and they can write their ideas anonymously. I usually end up with a giant free-flowing board of really great examples and the kids love to read what others have come up with. Click on the image to grab a FREE copy of my Figurative Language Student Reference / Review Sheet! Have fun! Addie **Check out the ESOL Odyssey for a fun Linky Party for National Poetry Month. Lots of great FREE and paid products linked up.
Use this worksheet to have students illustrate what their mental image is while reading silently, with a partner, or as a class. Mental images work great with all genres including poetry!
Epic poetry is a type of narrative art that is common to many cultures but has its ideal form in that of Greek and Roman mythology.
Bee-Bim Bop!, written by Linda Sue Park and illustrated by Ho Baek Lee Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company Digital Text Provided By: PBS @ pbskids.org/lions Pages: 44 Genre: Digital Text, Picture Book, Rhyme/Poetry Book, Multicultural Rating: Thumbs Up!! This is the story of how a mother and daughter are having fun making bee-bim bop. They have to go to the store, get the ingredients, and then make supper. They then hop and skip through the preparation through the words of the author. The digital text version of this story was nice as it depicted the girl and created movement. It was also good for early readers in that they could follow along with the highlighted text. Finally, the story was brought to life with background music. For all of these reasons, it was given a "Thumbs Up!!"
I like to spend a couple weeks each year teaching my students about poetry. We do a number of fun activities in addition to reading and writing different poems. We have a poetry battle, rank poetry, make a poetry journal, and much more! Here is a look into my poetry unit.... To kick off my poetry unit I have my students each complete this KWL Chart about Poetry. We then discuss what poetry is, what a poet's purpose is, what poems can have, etc. I use and display these posters during my unit! Over the years I have found poems that are great for young children to listen to. Instead of having multiple books that I have to search through to find the poem I want to read, I have typed the poems on individual pages and compiled them together. Each day I choose two different poems to read to my class. After reading the two poems, my students each vote on which poem they liked the best. We fill in the Poetry Battle bracket together. By the end of my poetry unit my class has found their all-time favorite poem (which is usually Brod Bager's poem Booger Love)! I also like for my students to fill out the Ranking Poetry page after listening to a poem. I like for them to fill these out after listening to poems that have the different parts of figurative language in them that we have learned about. Here are some of the different figurative language topics that I cover during my poetry unit. Each poster has the term, definition, and example. If you are looking for Figurative Language Posters click HERE to download my 23 Figurative Language Posters from my TpT Store! Each student makes their own Poetry Journal throughout my unit. They choose the cover of their journal. They color, cut, and glue it on the top of a brad folder. Each poem the student writes gets hole-punched and added to their folder! Each student also fills out the "About the Poet" page and adds it as the first page to their poetry journal. Here's a look at the different poems we learn about and write throughout the unit. I usually pick one poem a day to teach and have the students write during our allotted writing time. Word Picture Poem Who, What, When, Where, Why Poem Triplet Poem Shape Poem Quatrain Poem List Poem Limerick Poem -ing Poem I'm So Smart Poem Important Poem If It Weren't For You Poem If I Were...Poem I Wish...Poem I Like...Poem I Am Poem Holiday Poem Haiku Poem Free Verse Poem Diamante Poem Couplet Poem Color Poem Cinquain Poem Bio Poem Alphabet Alliteration Poem Adjective Poem 5 Senses Poem 2-Worder Poem Acrostic Poem By the end of the unit each student has a wonderful collection of poetry they have written. I slip a parent note in the first pocket of the folder and send each student's poetry journal home. The parent note tells the parents all the wonderful things we learned during our poetry unit and invites them to sit down with their child and read each poem their child has written. To make teaching your own poetry unit simple, easy, and fun...download my complete poetry unit on my TpT store by clicking HERE!
download VA - Secret Weapons CELESTIAL - Celestial Records GENRE Progressive House, Melodic, Organic House / Downtempo, Indie Dance RELEASE DATE 2024-02-08 AUDIO
It's about time, teachers,... to talk about using poetry centers for POETRY! Depending on the age and stage of your students, you may wish to begin a study of poetic structures with rhyme scheme, meter, and/or stanzas. The figurative language synonymous with poetry is a rich source of study for centers. For example, metaphors are an appropriate subject for task cards: Similarly, assonance, similes, alliteration, onomatopoeia, etc. can be studied at centers. Writing responses to poetry are appropriate for centers, as is creating original poetry. I find that elementary students are more comfortable writing poetry when they have a "prescription" for writing. For example, they love writing haiku. There are many, many types of poetry that are engaging for students to write, but the "prescription" may be elusive. At my poetry centers, I place poetry posters with the task cards that ask them to write specific poetry. For instance, when using the task card for haiku, I put this poster at the center: My goal at learning centers is for the students to be as independent as possible. After all, I'm conducting guided reading groups during center time. By using task cards and posters, I have largely accomplished this goal. There will always be some children who struggle to work independently, either because of their personality or learning needs. The majority, however, can act independently or find the assistance they need from their peers. Please remember that none of this happens overnight. You must invest time in training your students to use centers of any type. With poetry centers, it is essential that you model the things you want your students to do and ensure that your students are very familiar with the poetry before you place it in the center. Next time, I will address some random thoughts about poetry learning centers. If you are interested in my poetry task cards and the poetry posters I created for poetry centers, you can find both at my TpT Store or in my TN Shop.
There are a few considerations you should make while looking for good childrens books. You must first confirm that the books are suitable for your childs age.
This is a fun, simple, engaging way for the students to practice identifying genres based off of their descriptions. There are 8 genres being reviewed in this activity: Poetry, nonfiction, realistic fiction, historical fiction, biography, autobiography, fantasy, and fairytale. Student create the cootie catcher and quiz each other on the genres. Directions are included on how to cut and fold the cootie catcher! Thank you for your purchase!
Kids are inundated by rules. If the gift of writing is freedom of expression, are we imposing too many “rules” on writers? What if the rules of every genre, like poetry, were limited to…
There are a few considerations you should make while looking for good childrens books. You must first confirm that the books are suitable for your childs age.
Aquarius season is here, so we have 10 books you need on your TBR! We have an array of genres: speculative, poetry, spice… you name it, we got you covered!
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Literacy Genre Posters and Genre Tally Handout Product contains posters for the following genres: -mystery -legend -poetry -tall tale -fable -fairy tale -historical fiction -science fiction -informational -myth -biography -autobiography -folktale -fantasy The last page of this document is a handout for students to keep a tally of what genres they have read.
The new mini-series tells the story of a Scottish stand-up comic who is haunted by a stalker for months on end. It is based on the real torment of 34-year-old Fife comedian and actor Richard Gadd.
This introduction to poetry gives teachers ideas on teaching poetry minlessons that make a difference in how your students think about poems.
A few years ago (maybe five or six) our state standards changed for reading, pretty dramatically. I know all of you who have been through the Common Core Craze can understand that. I, however, am from
As we continue to learn more and more about poetry, we continue to add more and more to our anchor chart! Last week, I read the book Twilight Comes Twice by Ralph Fletcher as a mentor text for the idea that poetry paints pictures with words. I created a Thoughtful Log prompt sheet to help students expand this idea in their Thoughtful Logs. I pulled two stanzas from the book and asked students to draw the picture that came into their mind when they read the stanzas. Here are some of their visual reflections! (Note: Require kids to use colored pencils and encourage them to blend colors and use the shading techniques they've hopefully learned in art class. I think the blending really helped to capture the beauty in the kids' pictures.) On a different day last week, we also discussed that when you read poetry, you will often need to INFER to understand the poem at a deeper level. I modeled this by first analyzing clues in a poem: I highlighted the clues that helped me infer who the author was writing to in this poem and recorded my thoughts. As the poem went on, I got a clearer and clearer picture in my head! A hamster! For guided practice, I gave students a different poem and had students highlight the clues that helped them infer the topic of the poem. Students also were encouraged to record their inferences as they read so I could see evidence of their inferences changing over time. Then I had students draw a picture of what they believed the topic of the poem was. If students truly paid attention to ALL of the clues, they would have drawn a group of baby bunnies like these students did: Some students thought the topic was baby mice... But if they had truly read and thought about all of the clues, the 'ears in a tangle' clue is what truly helps to clarify the topic of the poem. After our lesson, I challenged students to write a poem in which the audience would need to infer what the topic is just based on the clues. Here were some of their poems. Can you infer the topic? This student even played with the shape of his words (which was something we had anchored on our poetry anchor chart earlier last week too!): This student wrote clues to describe a character from the Warriors series (which many kids in my class are obsessed with, by the way!): Last week we also started writing color poems to continue practicing the idea that when we write poetry, we want to appeal to our audience's senses and require them to infer! I modeled this by selecting a color and recording nouns for things we see, taste, feel, smell, and hear that are associated with that color. (Eventually we will delete the color name when we revise and publish, but for now, it help kids stay in the frame of mind of the color they selected.) Students then selected a color of their own. I encouraged basic colors only (since it's hard to come up with a lot of ideas for mauve or lime green, etc.!) When students got to the part of their pre-writing sheet where it asked them to record feelings associated with their colors, students referred to their Thoughtful Logs where we had recorded ideas from Dr. Seuss' Many Colored Days mentor text. It was a great resource to link students with their prior learning! Here are a few samples after day one: Today during Writer's Workshop, I modeled how to revise our initial ideas by adding descriptive adjectives before our nouns and extending each idea into a phrase. Tomorrow we will conference with our peers, and on Wednesday we will publish in the computer lab! ***** In Social Studies last week, we read the story The Whispering Cloth by Peggy Dietz Shea to discuss the emigration of refugees from Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand. I used this slide to explain the historical context for the story. (And yes, I noticed I spelled 'clothes' instead of 'cloths' in the last sentence! ARGH!) I had students glue the following chart into their Thoughtful Logs. In a previous lesson, I had modeled for students how to record facts from a text and respond, and students completed a chart similar to this one for guided practice. To continue on with the gradual release of responsibility, I didn't record anything while reading this book. Instead, students were responsible for pulling out and recording important information and responding as we read together. Here are some of the great responses students recorded during our lesson: Today in Social Studies, I handed out leveled readers to all my students. Four immigrant groups were featured in the readers: Mexican, Irish, Chinese, and German-Jewish. What's great about these readers is that they are organized identically but their content and complexity are different. You can see in the group below, one student is reading about the Irish, another is reading about German-Jewish immigrants, another is reading about the Chinese, and the fourth student is reading about Mexican immigrants! (Thank you, National Geographic, for designing readers this way!) All students read pgs. 6 - 9 in their readers and made a graphic organizer in their Thoughtful Logs to record all the reasons their immigrant group left their homeland. Students were told they would be responsible for teaching their peers about their immigrant group so it was important to organize their information to help them remember. After students read their pages and created their organizers, I had them get in 'immigrant-alike' groups to compare their information and either add to or revise their graphic organizers based on their discussion of their immigrant group. These students discussed why Chinese immigrants left their homeland. These students discussed Mexican immigrants' reasons for leaving Mexico. These students discussed why German-Jewish immigrants left Germany. And I worked in a more guided setting to discuss reasons Irish immigrants wanted to leave Ireland. Then I put students in 'immigrant-different' groups. Students were in groups of 4, with each of the 4 immigrant groups represented within the group. First, students color-coded their own group's reasons for leaving. This student used green to indicate all the reasons the Irish left their homeland. Through discussion, students added reasons to their notes using the matching color for each immigrant group based on what they learned from one another. Here you can see this student indicates the German-Jewish immigrants reasons for leaving Germany using blue. In green, she added what she learned from her peer about Irish immigrants. New reasons were added to the page and check marks were placed next to reasons that could be categorized for more than one group! Through differentiation, note-taking, and social discourse, students were in charge of their own learning with each other. Tomorrow we will explore the challenges immigrants faced, using a similar format!
Hello Everyone! Well, we made it through our first week back after winter break! It was a four day week for kids, but teachers were there all five! We enjoyed some inservice time together on Monday before the kids came on Tuesday. It helps to ease into second semester a little! :) For the next few weeks in writing, we will focus on poetry. I looooove teaching poetry to our youngest writers because there isn't a wrong or right way to write poetry. At the beginning of the unit, kids don't realize they can be poets! In first grade we work on writing sensory poems, list poems, concrete or shape poems and other unrhymed poems. I have shared my poetry unit before, but because we are starting our unit in January, I felt as though having winter as an inspiration was an important component, so I added a few seasonal pages to the unit! I know some of you are buried in snow right now and you probably would rather not focus on winter and snow, but these little Texans don't get to see snow very often. In fact...It actually snowed a little bit on Friday, and the excitement was uncontrollable!! We had noses pressed to our window until we could bear it no longer. I let the kids go outside for a few minutes and you would have thought I gave them the moon!! Ahhhhh! There's nothing like catching snowflakes on your tongue!!! We will sooooooo use this experience for inspiration for writing some sensory poems!!! Anyway...Here are a few things you'll get in the updated poetry unit: The unit is now about 100 pages with templates and visuals for about 10 different kinds of poetry. If you are at all interested, simply hover and CLICK HERE!! :) You will be directed to the downloadable and printable 100 page unit! Yes, It's free!! Oh! We are also working on reading and understanding poetry written by other poets. It is important that kids learn to interpret other texts, and discuss the author's purpose. CLICK HERE for a 26 page printable unit on Shel Silverstein! I hope you have as much fun working on poetry with your kids as I do! Please let me know if there is anything else you want me to include in this unit!!! I am always open for suggestions, corrections, etc!! Have a wonderful week, everyone!!! Don't forget to find JOY in the journey!! :) Nancy
Teaching prose, drama, and poetry is quick and easy. Your third and fourth grade students just need a little vocabulary and practice.
There are a few considerations you should make while looking for good childrens books. You must first confirm that the books are suitable for your childs age.
Poetry is a genre that has a lot of variation. Some forms of poetry are extremely structured, following a certain rhyme scheme and syllable count, while others allow more creative freedom.
Indigenous writers know what it's like to live in a world where the horror never stops — so imagining an alternate timeline where it does end can be a comforting escape.
