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I asked the group about a week ago ways to introduce poetry to their elementary group. I am very lacking in poetry skills as when I had to go to school we were required to MEMORIZE it and COPY it into a notebook. This left me with permanent poetry impairment scars. Here are suggestions I received from you gentle readers: Thanks for all the suggestions Jan Cole LMS Horace Mann Elementary Duncan, OK 73533 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Have a look at the links at http://www.shambles.net/pages/staff/poetry/ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Here are some ideas that I use: In Second Grade I pair poems with stories for the first 10 visits or so. Each week the kids read the poem, talk about what they notice (rhming words, patterns, etc), divide the poem into parts and read ala choral verse. The poem I choose matches a story I'm going to read. We end up with a booklet of poems that they pretty much all can read. We have one session at the end where they choose their favorites to reread. I gather the poems together,add a cover and and they take it home. For eg: a sports poem from the book Sports! Sports! Sports paired with a story that features the same sport in some way. They are beginning readers so I start with simple poems and throw in some more complicated ones later. This week we were reading the book "First Day in Grapes" So I copied two poems about the first day of school. They will read both of them and then decide which one fits the book better. In third grade the kids do a project with particular animals so I ask them to read some animal poems, or find their favorite animal poem to practice reading and share with the gorup. We compare the style and look of the poems. You could also compare the information about the animal in the poem with information found elsewhere. In fourth grade the classroom teachers have a long poetry unit so it's easy for me. The unit involves the kids choosing a poet to research, write out three of his/her poems, write a poem in that poet's style. So I begin a few weeks earlier and put out poetry books in stacks by author. The kids have to choose a stack and read poems by one author, then the next week they must choose another poet and so on, in order to expose themselves to different styles. They they are better-prepared to select a poet. They we look up information about the poets in the Junior Book of Authors, encyclopedias, etc. to help with the classroom research. I'm thinking of having Poetry Alive come to the school for a presentation sometime. I've had Kristine OConnell George and Janet Wong come to the school. That would make it easy to just read their poems in preparation ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Check out the book A Kick in the Head, which shows various types of poetry, has an example of each, and some lovely collage art on each page. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Hi - I love poetry and found some pretty fun things to do with it I called the unit/lesson "A closer Look at a Poetry Book" - I memorized "Smart" by Shel Silverstein - (i didn't memorize which book it's in) then I took each piece of money in the poem and glued velcro to the back - I did the poem with a flannel board or with my Book Props Apron. Also I memorized "Mother Doesn't Want a Dog" from Judith Viorst's book "If I Were in Charge of the World" and at the end I pulled a snake in a can out of my pocket and opened the can........it was fun and it encouraged more than a few kids to look closer at the poetry section in the library. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Here is a great source for some poetry lessons, including a complete unit on poetry writing by the master poet himself, Jack Prelutsky. I've used the unit with third graders myself, and it was very helpful. http://teacher.scholastic.com/lessonplans/results.asp +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Use Silverstein and Prelutsky books--including Rolling Harvey Down the Hill and Runny Babbitt. Both poets have some websites for some additional ideas. Nonsense poetry can be loads of fun. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ I really enjoy teaching concrete poetry. There are books full of concrete poems. After we look at some together, the students create one. They are really cool. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Have you checked the archives? Last year I think there someone who talked about cutting up really good poems (with scissors) into words and phrases to make seeds for poems, and then the students created poetry from the seeds. It was a really interesting idea. So I checked the archives and found this: I teach a lesson about found poetry using cut strips of white paper in a ziploc baggie and 100 of my favorite poetry books. I tell the kids that today we're going to grow poems; they already know I'm weird so this news does not phase them in the least :-) So then, I talk about if we wanted to grow apples, what would be needed? Finally someone says apple seeds. I pose the same questions with oranges and pumpkins. They've got the pattern down now and easily respond orange seeds and pumpkins seeds. Then, I say, what do I need if I want to grow poems. Some free thinker (every class has one... hard to believe with NCLB and standardized testing, but we haven't killed them all yet) will respond poem seeds. I ask what are poem seeds. Someone will say, words. Then, I remind them that poets don't just use any words; they use the right ones. Then, we talk about where we find apple seeds (inside apples), where we find orange seeds (inside oranges), where we find poem seeds (inside poems). Then, I give everyone a baggie of blank strips (about 100 strips... that's about five pieces of plain white paper cut into 20 strips/sheet per student) and a stack of books. They use a pencil to go through the books of poetry and collect seeds for their own poems. They can copy words or phrases-- one per strip (front side only). I do some samples from a poem on the overhead so that we practice getting strong words-- good quality seeds. Then, they work. Every once in awhile, I'll issue a challenge to the room like, "Good poets often have questions. Find a question to write on a strip." or "Find a color word that isn't the basic box of crayons." or "Find five strong action words (verbs)." Once they've collected seeds from lots of different books, with me all the time stressing to find things from Shel Silverstein and Robert Frost, Jack Prelutsky and Naomi Shihab Nye, they lay all their strips out face up and begin to find the magnetic words... the words that stick together. They write their own found poems this way, and they're always very good. The funny thing is though that they end up reading an awful lot of poetry before they write their own poem. They even read poems that may be too sophisticated for them because their reading to find words not symbolism. They sometimes will become more sophisticated readers through this experience, however. I'll never forget the fourth grader who I overheard tell her friend, "You should use this Sandburg guy's book. He's a really good poet." It made me giggle that she thought she was discovering Sandburg's genius until I remembered that she was discovering it for her... in the fourth grade! :-) After the students grew their poems from their seeds, I then did some art history with them about collage and we created collage art to complement their poems. The teachers hung these up in the hallway and the principal wanted to know how the kids wrote such sophisticated poetry. The kids told my principal, "Ask Ms. Rod. She made it seem really simple. We could teach you if you want, but good poetry and good art takes time. You can't hurry. You can dig a hole in an hour, but it takes eons to create the Grand Canyon." I just had to laugh. I didn't think they had even heard the analogy. I was wrong. The nice side benefit of this lesson however was that the circulation of my poetry section increased exponentially. So much so that the teacher asked me to limit the number of poetry books her kids could check out because that's all they wanted to do in class is read poetry. What a lovely problem to have! :-) ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ http://www.cis.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1991/4/91.04.06.x.html http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1994/2/94.02.02.x.html http://shelsilverstein.com/indexSite.html http://www.gigglepoetry.com/ http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Prairie/7537/984anpm.html Here are some suggested websites I bookmarked from other LM-NETters. I like to use Shel Silverstein poems. For grade 2 I use Cuttin Kate, and they act it out. For other grades I like to get the audio of Where the Sidewalk Ends, so they can see how much inflection and emotion add to poetry. Giggle Poetry (link above) has lots of fun ideas. Acrostic poems are fun to write. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Have you seen the Shel Silverstein site? http://shelsilverstein.com/html/home.html It links to this PDF document of ideas and activities: http://www.shelsilverstein.com/pdf/poetry.pdf ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ www.poetry4kids.com www.inofoplease.com/spot/pmonth1.html +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ -------------------------------------------------------------------- Please note: All LM_NET postings are protected by copyright law. You can prevent most e-mail filters from deleting LM_NET postings by adding LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU to your e-mail address book. 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