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Here are the many suggestions people sent me for poems to memorize for 5/6
grades. Soon, I hope to get around to either posting a list of the poems
I'm using, or I'll get it on my website, or something!!
Thanks to everyone who provided suggestions. Cheryl Adams, Angus Sanders,
Wendy Braithwaite, Ellen Beunderman, Marcia Dressel, Alana Heward, Eduardo
Mostiero, Paula Neale, Julie Dahlhauser, Sherry Nelson, Joan Kimball.
****
First off, I hope the kids can learn many nursery rhymes....ex: Jack and
Jill, Hey diddle diddle the cat and the fiddle, Humpty Dumpty, Little Miss
Muffett.......
Here are some more, mostly short, mostly found in The Random House Book of
Poetry for Children selected by Jack Prelutsky.
-Something from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, ex: You
are Old Father William or Jabberwocky (these are both long).
-Something funny, ex: I Went to the Animal Fair, Anon.
-A nonsense narrative ex: The Owl and the Pussy Cat by Edward Lear (long)
-Thirty days hath September....
-Keep a Poem in Your Pocket by de Regniers
-Who Has Seen the Wind? by Christina Rossetti (kids love hearing about
Rossetti: that she's a woman, that she lived over 100 years ago...)
-Alligator Pie by Dennis Lee (good with gestures; nice to include a
Canadian poet)
-Hug 0' War by Shel Silverstein ("I will not play at tug o' war....")
-Fog by Carl Sandburg ("The fog comes on little cat feet....")
-Long Gone by Jack Prelutsky (" Don't waste your time in looking for the
long extinct tyrannosaur...")
My all-time favorite is "I Had a Mother Who Read To Me" :)
Off the top of my head I'd consider "High Flight" by John Gillespie Magee
Jr.....the one that begins "Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth/And
danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings...."
Besides being a perfect sonnet, its background is really fascinating. It was
written by a 19-year-old pilot just before he was killed in action in 1941.
He was an American who flew with the Royal Canadian Air Force.
President Reagan read this poem at the memorial service for the victims of
the space shuttle Challenger (including Christa McAuliffe). Also it is a
favorite poem of the boy and the teacher in the book "Man Without a
Face"...and it's one of my favorites too.
I loved hearing about your experiences with Little Orphant Annie. My mother
used to read that to us every year at Halloween and every kid in the
neighborhood would come to listen. I'm glad kids still like it.
THE TERRIBLE TIGER Prelutsky
Great if you can get a teacher to do it in tandem with you
The Creation ill by Ransome
In our mostly African-American school, I do this at Easter. It's
interesting. Some are clearly disturbed by the depiction of the
characters as black. Others are gung-ho that it should be so.
Casey at the Bat by Thayer. I sure have to work a lot harder to get this
one across than I used to.
Little Abigail and the Pony - Silverstein
There a a couple more by Silverstein but my books are at school and I want
to check the exact titles.
I am in a K-5 school now, but for middle school or early high school, I
think Alfred Noyes, The Highwayman is great. Parts of it could be used in
elementary too because of the imagery. "The moon was a ghostly galleon
tossed upon cloudy seas" is one of the few lines I've remembered forever
and ever.
Tiger by William Blake
This is making me feel guilty. I need to do more poetry with the kids, so
please post a hit.
As a child, I loved the Owl and the PussyCat by Lear. But I have never
had the nerve to try it with today's slang-savvy kids. Even first graders
would loose control on the refrain, I think. What do you think?
You mention using something by Poe. How about "The Bells?" It has a lovely
rhythm, is not particularly morbid, and is pleasant to hear as well as to
recite.
Also, for those who wish a short poem, "The Snake" by Emily Dickinson would
probably be well received.
One of my favorite poems is a poem by Edward Lear. It goes "A was once an
apple pie..." etc. through the letters of the alphabet. I shared that with
my kids when they were little. It is a little old fashioned but I still
like it.
How about Longfellow's The Village Blacksmith (Under a Spreading Chestnut
Tree/The village smithy stands...)
There is another one I love and can't remember the title. By Vachel Lindsay,
it is about the train eating up the miles as it goes across the prairie...
And how about Emily Dickinson poems. Lots of good short but thought
provoking ones there. And who could leave school without knowing I'm
nobody/Who are you...
And the great black poet Langston Hughes has some excellent short ones.
I think that I shall never see
a poem as lovely as a tree.....
I used to do poetry with the kids in whole classes (grades 3-5) using
actions to go along with the poems. Makes the poetry fun and easy to learn.
One of our favorites was The Eagle by Alfred Lord Tennyson
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
(WITH ACTIONS)
He clasps the crag with crooked hands; (make your hands into clasping claws
held at shoulder height and in front)
Close to the sun in lonely lands, (shield forehead with hand looking into
imaginary sun)
Ringed with the azure world he stands. (from arms into large circle in front
of you)
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; (make hands form gently the waves of
the sea, moving gently in a pattern like waves--having a hard time
describing that action))
He watches from his mountain walls, (shield forehead with hand and peer down
as if searching prey)
And like a thunderbolt he falls. (everyone falls--loudly of course--to the
ground)
We also did eletelephony with actions and the intro to Hiawatha. If you are
inventive you can make up actions to many (although some are too slow or
introspective to lend themselves to actions). Each week before we learned
another we would do several of the ones that we had in our repertoire to
keep them fresh.
Another fun thing was to do some of the poems in Paul Fleishman's two books
of poetry for two voices, Joyful Noises and I am Phoenix. I would write
them out on large flip charts, side by side, making sure the
two sets are carefully lined up and that blank lines are clear). Then divide
the class into two parts and practice reading each part separately to make
sure everyone can read the words. Then read it together. The
children really liked it and we would read the same ones frequently to see
if they could get better (more expression, clearer division of when they
were silent).
I worked in a tiny tiny library and had about 18-22 kids to a class. We had
no room for chairs so they all sat on the floor for stories, poems, etc. So
space is not a consideration.
It was a little time consuming writing the two pieces of the poems in large
clear print for reading from a distance. But I wouldn't recommend printing
them in separate papers. At least with everyone's attention forward they are
all concentrating on the same thing! And once they are written you can use
them many many times.
My daughter (then about 12) and I used to sit together reading them on an
afternoon and also enjoyed them thoroughly that way.
GLad to hear you are teaching memorization. I think it is an excellent
training for the mind and am sorry to see so little of it done now.
A fun poem to memorize is Lewis Carroll's 'Jabberwocky'--and so is his
'Father William.' A Poe poem that I enjoyed memorizing as a child was 'El
Dorado.' I, too, would choose Frost's 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy
Evening' and also would consider 'The Road Not Taken.' The poems in T. S.
Eliot's 'Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats' are great, although some of
them are not quite politically correct (by the way, there's an excellent
audiorecording of these poems by John Gielgud and an English actress whose
name I can't remeber). Lear's 'The Owl and the Pussycat.' 'The Tyger' by
William Blake. Wordsworth's 'I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.' I must stop.
Much success with your project!
perhaps I have been in education too long... I don't know about the
theme for Invictus or Ulysses, but they are inspirational to me.
Here's a well-known poem by E. E. Cummings, with no title other than its
first line.
Buffalo Bill's
defunct
****
Country Things
(The Barn)
-Gene Bowers
**
When I heard the Learn'd Astronomer
- Walt Whitman. 1900. Leaves of Grass.
**
THOMAS HARDY (1840-1928)
THE DARKLING THRUSH
****
Sea Fever
**
Vitai Lampada
by Sir Henry Newbolt
**
ALFRED TENNYSON, ULYSSES, The World's Best Poetry on CD (tm), 20 Mar 1995.
**
Invictus
by William Ernest Henley
**
Underdog theme
by Unknown
**
In Flanders Fields
by John McCrae
The Duel by Eugene Field
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