Children's Literature Strategies
Course
Strategies for Poetry [12:04]
I'd like to talk about one of my favorite genres: poetry. Here are some strategies that I think can be really meaningful and very practical for library and classroom use.
First I'd like to talk about Poetry Fridays and what that means. This notion of Poetry Friday is something I found to be lots of fun. And it seems to have really caught on in the classroom and library world as well. It started in cyberspace with bloggers pausing on Fridays to post a poem or something about poetry. And the idea was Friday is sort of a more relaxed day where we can maybe do something a little different from our routine so why not take a few minutes to plug in a poem. It's not supposed to substitute for whatever else you might already be doing with poetry. So if you already love it and share it often, great. But for people who are not finding poetry part of their everyday routine, reading a poem out loud every Friday is not a bad way to start. And in many cases I found that schools in particular enjoy sharing a poem through the morning announcements. So if you have a tradition of having announcements every morning on Fridays, see if the principle, to start, might read a poem out loud or take advantage of this opportunity and see if you can have some student volunteers or teachers or librarian read a poem out loud over the announcements.
Then it becomes a wonderful shared poem that everyone has heard and can talk about and look for more books of poetry and whatnot. And for a lot of kids, it's the only time they might hear poetry and it's meant to be read out loud and heard and enjoyed. Because of the lyrical language of poetry, hearing it is the best way to introduce it. That's low pressure, low key, no analysis necessary. Just share a poem out loud.
And there are so many good resources for finding good poems. The 811 section of the library is full of poetry gems from the favorite Shel Silverstein collections, or the hilarious Jack Prelutsky collections to many new poets who are writing for young people and my own work has been very much focused on poetry sharing with kids. I've created poetry Friday anthologies explicitly for this purpose. So think about infusing a read aloud on Fridays as a way for kids to listen first and then, as they feel brave, to participate to volunteer to read out loud. If it's not over the announcements, it could also be in the classroom setting or to start off the library hour or Caroline [unintelligible 00:03:46] even talks about how poetry volunteer can wander from room to room, reading a poetry out loud like a town crier. I think that could be fun but it takes a little bit more planning and practice.
So a second to strategy I'd like to talk about is a little bit more work but a little bit more reward as well, and that's choral reading and poetry performance. This is not just reading out loud to share a poem. This is getting kids involved in reading a poem out loud together. And you'll see again I'm really focused on the reading out loud part. Rather than reading silently or reading independently. Because of poetry being so much like music, like songs, like lyrics, like drama. Because a poem has so much beautiful language in it that begs to be heard.
So gather poetry books, have the kids browse through them, have them pick a favorite poem. And then use that poem and look at ways to get the kids to read it out loud together with you. And there are many ways to approach that. I've written actually about this quite a lot in my own work in a book called Poetry Aloud Here, for example, I have lots of strategies for taking lots of specific poems and performing them. And in the Poetry Friday Anthologies as well, you'll see explicit directions on how to take like 500 poems and read them out loud with kids. But in a nutshell, basically what you do is you look for the poem and you divide it up into roles.
So, if there's a repeated refrain or repeated line, that can be something the whole class can say together as if they were a Greek chorus, it's a collective part for everyone. If there's dialogue, that can be like a Reader's Theater kind of performance with individual students taking different voices. Or if there are multiple stanzas then different groups can each take a stanza. So group one can read the first stanza, group two the second. Or if there are sound effects, quite often there's a dog barking or a door closing, kids can simply make the noises to suggest the sound effects. There are so many ways to take a poem and then add a little extra to it. So that when you read aloud, you've got everybody involved, and you're adding that sort of multisensory experience of it too.
Once you get the ball rolling and have taken the time to prepare a poem and get everybody reading it out loud with you, then I found that students will often just run with that, they will find their own poems from their favorite books. And they will suggest ways to read it out loud, whether it's a whole class or with friends or a small group. And there is no one way to do it so why not let them take the lead. I think that's such a great way for them to practice words especially the beautiful words of a poem, and to gain confidence in reading out loud in front of others. And then of course if you wanted, you can audio tape that or video tape that. And that can be a tremendous resource to share again later or put on the school TV channel, if you have one, and of course get the kids' permission, or you can share it at an open house or assembly.
The third strategies for sharing poetry is to look at ways to connect poetry across the curriculum in other areas besides reading or language arts. And this is one of the approaches I found to be really appealing to teachers in particular because there are so many wonderful poetry books in science especially but in social studies as well that you can take a poem about Martin Luther King Jr, for example--there are many wonderful poems about this famous leader--And you can share that on Martin Luther King Day or you can infuse it into Black History Month or you can use it in social studies for Civil Rights issue. So there are many opportunities to start a lesson with a short 30 second poem that helps set the stage for the content that is to come. And in science and social studies especially, it's a great way to provide context so you have the main idea in the poem, you have some key vocabulary presented there. And you've set the stage for a lesson whether the teacher or librarians reading it out loud or whether kids are reading it together with you, that is such a great way to infuse two different disciplines, poetry and the content areas.
The fourth approach in using poetry in K5 especially is to link poetry specifically with the work of nonfiction or with a picture book. It's similar to across the curriculum but here we're being really specific. So the poem, for example, a Shel Silverstein poem, let's see if I can think of one, Sarah Cynthia Sylvia stout would not take the garbage out. A very popular poem that kids love. About a girl who's garbage at home piles up so high, it becomes a ridiculous skyscraper of garbage. All right, so there's a poem from Shel Silverstein book that almost everyone has on the shelves. And you take that poem and then you connect it with a nonfiction book. A simple picture book about, well, garbage for one or ecology or the community, keeping the community clean, completely different take on the same subject but you're linking two separate genres, poetry and nonfiction which is one of those things the common core really loves. But you're also getting kids to think very diverse lay about how to different writers might approach the same topic. A poet might write about garbage this way, a researcher might write about garbage this way. You can do the same thing with the picture book there's one about the garbage truck. Yes. So you could share the garbage poem and then the garbage truck picture book that so fun. That personifies the garbage truck as it goes around the community in the wee hours picking up everyone's garbage. And again talk about how two different approaches to the same subject can really show different ways of writing and thinking and describing things. That is a wonderful strategy too.
And then finally, my fifth strategy for sharing poetry, is to encourage the writing of poetry. And almost every school does this in some way. But unfortunately in my experience, most kids are asked to write poetry before they've even read very much. So that's my one caveat, is that I'm a big fan of encouraging kids to write it but make sure they've had a good dose of reading and hearing it first because it's very hard to write poetry if you don't know what it looks like or sounds like. So if they've read it on Fridays and they've performed it chorally and they've heard of it in science and they've connected it with nonfiction, well, then they're definitely ready to tackle some poetry writing.
And it's fun genre to encourage kids to write in because it's short. And that has a lot of appeal to kids who are a little intimidated about reading or writing anything long.
So you can take some of their favorite poems and start by asking them to imitate that form, to talk about whether it rhymes or doesn't rhyme. Talk about the number of stanzas, does it have stanzas? Are they two line, three line, or four line stanzas? Those would be couplets, tercet or quatrains. And you can use that language to describe what a poem is and what it looks like and get them to begin their poetry writing by imitating some of their favorites. That's a great way to begin. And a far less intimidating format than simply write a poem.
I also think it's useful for kids to write their first poems with partners and to start with a friend, brainstorming together what the topic is, choosing a favorite model to imitate, writing the lines together or deciding on the line breaks and the stanza breaks. It's a much more interactive thoughtful activity if they're doing it with a partner in my experience, at least that's a good way to start.
And then in some instances, I think it's really helpful for kids to think of the images that might go with their poems. So they want to find an image from a magazine or on the internet, if they want to drop picture or create a slide show, sometimes visualizing the poem also is helpful for them. Because kids do think in so many different ways, they're kinesthetic, they're visual, they're auditory. The more senses we can engage, the more effective we'll be and the more learners we'll reach. So you might have kids as they're creating their poems also illustrate their poems or look for images to accompany their poems. I think that can be helpful too.
And of course you want them to share with one another when they have something completed. Because the whole idea of a poem is, it's not just for oneself but typically to read out loud and share with one another and you can make a class book out of their poems or a display or it can be a gift or that they share with someone they care about, lots of things that you could do with original poems that kids create. And that can be such a keepsake for them or for a family member, whether it's a lesson or something they do on their own, poetry's such a great outlet for expressing your feelings and thoughts. And every kid should have that opportunity. They may not all be poets, that's okay. They should get a chance to give it a try.
This lesson suggests methods for sharing, finding, and creating poetry with students. From the simple read-aloud of poetry on "Poetry Fridays" to original composition of poems, poetry can be infused into daily school experiences and learning in a variety of ways. The reading and writing of poetry are tightly connected, as Vardell explains. It may be difficult for students to write in the style of poetry, which includes unique usage of rhymes, imagery, and/or rhythm of language if they have had little exposure to poems. Thus, students should read and hear poetry prior to and as part of any poetry writing exercise. In the activity below, you will prepare materials for an experience reading and writing poetry, following the suggestions in the workshop.
1. Select a grade level or age range for this experience. (Note that this exercise doesn't involve writing a full lesson plan, only the preparation of materials).
2. From your library poetry collection or online resources such as www.poets.org, read and choose several poems representing different subjects, formats, and styles.
3. For practice and to have samples to model with students, create your own original poems following the writing of a few of your selected poems. For ideas on how to begin, see the strategies suggested by Vardell, such as following rhyming patterns, use of stanzas, or matching images to poetry.
MLA Citation
Morris, Rebecca J. "Children's Literature Strategies: Write a Poem." School Library Connection, November 2024, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2063938?learningModuleId=2063931&topicCenterId=2247903.
Entry ID: 2122880
Additional Resources
About the Author
MLA Citation
Vardell, Sylvia M. "Children's Literature Strategies. Strategies for Poetry [12:04]." School Library Connection, ABC-CLIO, May 2017, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2063938?learningModuleId=2063931&topicCenterId=2247903.
https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2063938?learningModuleId=2063931&topicCenterId=2247903
Entry ID: 2063938