Poetry Ideas BIG KIDS Love and a Poetry Analysis FREEBIE

"Poetry... again?!"

"Didn't we just study poetry and write poems last year?"

I know, music to your teacher ears, right?

I have no idea what it is about poetry, but as soon as the "P" word comes out of my mouth, negative connotations fly from the mouths of my students.  Since April is National Poetry Month, I wanted to share some tried and true ways that I have found effective for engaging my reluctant upper elementary poets and turning them from poetry pessimists to poetry enthusiasts.

One essential of teaching poetry and making it as high interest as possible for my big kids is having as many poetry resources as I can acquire embellishing the classroom.  I want my students to see poetry everywhere and have the opportunity to grab any book that looks remotely exciting.  If they aren't exposed to poems of all sorts, how can they learn to LOVE it?  To ensure my students observe poetry everywhere, I stock my books shelves, place books on chalk board ledges, and fill book baskets with poetry resources.

One novel study that I incorporate into my poetry instruction is Love That Dog by Sharon Creech.  If you have never read this book, go get it.  It is a free verse novel that your poetry-despising students will connect with and love.  Jack, the narrator, hates poems and wants nothing to do with writing them.  The novel is his poetry journal and analysis of poems shared by his teacher, Miss Stretchberry as she convinces him that poetry isn't so awful to read and write.  My students can relate to Jack and truly connect to this poetry-filled novel.  You can move on to Hate That Cat next!

In the image my students are working on their response journal for Love That Dog.  They take on the role of Miss Stretchberry and work to encourage Jack's work with poetry.  Through this experience my students are responding to text, analyzing poetry, and sharing their thoughts and ideas with one another to enhance their writing, speaking, and listening.

In my district there has always been a great deal of collaboration with different grade levels. Because poetry is a focus in high school, one of my favorite collaborations is when former students of mine create and implement a poetry lesson for my 6th graders as an assignment in their 11th grade English class.  My students LOVE learning from these BIGGER kids and it is awesome to see my former students take on this instructional leadership role.  

In the image above, the 11th graders are sharing a poem and the different poetic devices found in the poem.  The ultimate goal was for my 6th graders to use the poem as inspiration to write their own poem that had the three poetic devices they learned about.

The poetry lesson was a hit and engaged all of the students involved.  While you don't have to enlist high school students to be the teachers and could incorporate your own students to take on instructional roles, it was a fun instructional approach.  While it can be tricky to have such diverse levels of students come together and coordinate their learning outcomes, it was poetry fun that my students won't forget.

The last way I connect my students with poetry is by NOT making them write poems.  Exposing them to a variety of poems is essential and will often inspire poetic writing to flow, but when it is MANDATED, they struggle.  By working on our poetry analysis, sharing songs, books filled with poems, and other free verse writing, my students get a wonderful poetry experience without the pressure of developing their own poems.

If you would like to get started or reinvigorate the work you do with poetry in your classroom, click the image to grab this FREEBIE...

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Spring Poetry Ideas

Hey y'all!

It's Rachel from A Tall Drink of Water.

I love teaching poetry and figurative language!

Even though April is poetry month, I like to teach poetry all year long.

A few weeks ago in my class, we have really jumped into the discussion of figurative language!
You can find these super cute figurative language posters here.

We made these alliteration rainbows which you can find here.
They were a big hit!

My favorite thing to do is have my kiddos writing poetry.

My kiddos this year are huge fans of acrostic poems! 

We probably have written an acrostic poem for every holiday/season this year!

I created these Spring poetry writing pages for you to use in your class!

You can grab those here!

How do you use poetry in  your classroom?

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Poem in Your Pocket!

April is Poetry Month!  Are you planning on participating in this annual event Thursday, April 21st?  I am for sure!

“The idea is simple: select a poem you love during National Poetry Month then carry it with you to share with co-workers, family, and friends [on Poem in Your Pocket Day].” Poems from pockets will be unfolded throughout the day with events in parks, libraries, schools, workplaces, and bookstores.~Poet.org

Our librarian is hosting this event at our school!  She has been working with all of the students at our school during library time.  My first graders are choosing poems and reciting during library time!  It's so cute!  I've created this frame for them to write their own poems during Work on Writing time! I also have lots of books with poems, songs and nursery rhymes for my students to copy and carry around in their pockets on Thursday!

As a school, we are asking the students and teachers to carry poems in their pockets and read to each other during recesses and lunch!  I know I'm looking forward it!

One of my favorite books to share with my kiddos is Pocket Poems by Bobbi Katz!  It offers a wonderful selection of short poems students can copy (love that penmanship practice) and carry around for reading!

I've created a cute paper for my kiddos to write their own poems.  It's yours for the taking!   Click the picture below!

Enjoy the Day!

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5 Free Online Poetry Websites Students Will Love

Many of you may know about these great FREE resources for poetry, but if you don't, you are in luck today! This is a great time to revisit these websites and find some free poetry for you and your students during National Poetry Month!

I use Giggle Poetry a lot! This site hosted by Bruce Lansky has so many funny poems that kids will enjoy reading over and over. The poems really hit home with a lot of children as they are about everything from life at home to life at school. Many are laugh out loud funny, even for adults.

Another fun site is Poetry4Kids.com by Kenn Nesbitt. This site is chock full of funny poems that get kids laughing and reading, two of my favorite things! Kenn includes poems by himself and other authors that will motivate students of all ages to read and share.

DLTK's Poetry page has some great poems students can use, especially for holidays. I love that they can be printed out easily for children to read and practice for fluency practice. Many of the poems are great for younger students too.

Fizzy, Funny, Fuzzy is a website I just found by Gareth Lancaster. He is a British Author, so the spellings are a little different, but the silliness ranks right up there with Bruce Lansky and Kenn Nesbitt. Kids will be laughing at all of the fun poems they find and read on this website.

Poems Every Child Should Know is actually a PDF of classic poems. Funny usually rules with students, but these poems are definitely worth checking out. This is chock full of classics from Longfellow, Shakespeare, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and many others. This is a great place to find poems for some of the older students who actually have to analzye poetry.

So, look no further than your trusty Internet to find some great poems for children ~ no books needed! And if you are looking for something to help with some poetry fun, these poetry resources helped my students as they looked into poetry and found out what it is really all about. The blue cover is a free sample of my paid product, which has the green cover.

        

Here is an example from the product.

Have a happy Poetry Month!

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One Teaching Technique EVERY Teacher Needs

When you think about your classroom routines and your teaching methods, what three techniques are your go-to options? Maybe it's interactive notebooks, anchor charts, and Daily Five?  or Maybe you love Close Reading, Mentor Texts, and Centers? I'd like to propose that you poetry notebooks into your daily routine.

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Autumn Poetry

Autumn, a season of changing colors, crisp air, football games, apple and pumpkin everything...what's not to love? Autumn is a season that pleases our senses in every way, so why not embrace that and write some sensory poems with your students?

Sensory poems are fun and easy to write. They are a great way to introduce students to poetry because students can easily understand their structure. A seasonal poem is about a season and it is a free-verse poem, which means that it does not have to rhyme, which is also why students find them to be easy. These poems highlight your fives senses. They have seven lines structured as follows:

Line 1: Name of the season
Line 2: Something you see in the season
Line 3: Something you smell in the season
Line 4: Something you hear in the season
Line 5: Something you taste in this season
Line 6: Something you feel during this season
Line 7: Name of the season

Example:

For those students that want a bit more of a challenge, try autumn haikus. Haikus also use sensory language to capture a feeling or image. I like to take students outside for haiku writing, because I think that surrounding students with nature helps them to generate ideas. When students can see it, they can write it. Sit down in an area and talk about what students see, hear, feel, and smell. I suggest doing a 5-10 minute brainstorm where students just list all of their observations (and hey, call them qualitative observations while you are at it, and you've got a bit of science in there). Then, share some fall haikus with your students to inspire them. Here's a few I've written that you can share if you don't love poetry writing quite as much as I do.

So embrace this wonderful season with your students and help them to see that poetry is an enjoyable experience. Since I love fall and all that comes with it, I put this fall poetry freebie together to share with you. It has everything you'll need to get your students started with fall seasonal sensory poetry and haikus. It also includes my examples above. Enjoy!

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Using Text Details in Poetry to Visualize

One of the most important skills readers need is visualizing. If kids struggle with visualizing, it makes it very hard to comprehend. There are ways to work on it though. Today I'll share a few with you.

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Reading Fluency with a Poem of the Week (with a free poetry response)...

Hi there!  This is Hilary from Primary Planet (formerly known as: Second Grade is Out of This World) and I wanted to share with you one way that we work on reading fluency in my classroom!

POETRY!

I love poetry!  

Here is how it works in our room.

   We have all of our poems stored in our Poetry Notebooks.   This is a 3 prong folder and it already has all of our "Poem of the Week" poems in it. This is a collection of a myriad of different poems selected for something that we are working on for that week. Some of them are just for fun.

 This year this is what our poetry notebook looks like:

We accidentally ordered ones with the window in the front, but we make do!

As you can see, it is a little beat up, but they have held up pretty well.  I think that next year I may try using a binder.  It will be easier to add poems that we use for other things in class.

What does this have to do with reading fluency?

Well, multiple readings of the same text leads to better fluency.  We read our poem of the week at least once everyday during our morning meeting.  I model good fluency: speed, punctuation, and reading with expression.  The kiddos read right along with me using the same fluency. They also practice reading their poems to a friend during Read with a Partner.

Sometimes we work on a  Poetry Response strip during the week as they work on their poem. (See the bottom of the post!)

On Fridays the kiddos take their poetry notebooks home and read it to three people (can be the same person three time, can be different people, they can read to their dogs or stuffed animals).  It gets initialed and returned to school (or parents can initial the response strip).  This is a reading homework grade.  The kiddos love sharing their poems with their families!

I do have a little freebie for you!  

This is the poetry response strip that I mentioned above!

Thanks so much for stopping by! Enjoy!

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Developing a Concept of Word

Other than size, how can you recognize a student in kindergarten? Maybe it's their energy, or maybe you see all of their smiles? For me, the sign is pointing as they read, and pointing to the text is a reading behavior we talk a lot about. It is one THE signs of reading progress. 

I am Carla from Comprehension Connection, and I'm excited to share literacy tidbits with you here on Classroom Tested Resources including information about Concept of Word.  I am a reading specialist from Virginia in my 25th year of teaching with grades K-5 and creator of products for Comprehension Connection.This year, I am working primarily with fourth and fifth, however, today's post will be aimed at Kinders and Firsties.  I will let you in on a secret. I LOVE the primary grades. :-)  

What is a Concept of Word?

So were you a bit thrown off by the title, Building COW with Kinders?  You may have wondered if you'd somehow clicked on a farming magazine by mistake, but developing COW (Concept of Word) is a critical instructional need for our emergent readers to move along the reading continuum to being real readers.

How does COW develop?

COW develops in stages, and below, you can see the descriptors for each stage in development.  If you  work with Pre-K, you may notice scribbles in writing progresses to random letters to maybe beginning sound.  At the start of kindergarten, we see a wide range and have kids come with no alphabet knowledge to those who are beginning to read some. Below, you'll see a brief description of the stages.

Undeveloped Concept of Word
1.  Has left to right directionality, but no word awareness. Writing looks like squiggles across page.
2.  Points along with stressed units (syllables or words, but does not differentiate).  Writing begins to include some letters, but they are random.
3.  Points to words and says syllables. Writing begins to include beginning sounds of words.

Rudimentary Concept of Word Development

The student is approaching the beginning reader stage when he/she:
4.  Points to words and begins to self correct when he/she gets off track. Writing now includes beginning and ending sounds, but may not include vowels.

Firm Development of a Concept of Word

The student has reached the beginning reader stage when he/she
5.  Demonstrates accurate tracking of print.  Writing includes space between words and short vowel words include beginning, middle, and ending sounds. The reader in the video below is not completely  firm, but very close.

How Can Teachers Work to Develop COW 

With Students?

The first step with Concept of Word Instruction is to teach a poem you've chosen to the students orally and with pictures. They need to have the poem memorized, so that they can accurately match the memorized words to the print they see. Teachers can use pictures that represent the text or hand motions with common nursery rhymes and finger plays. Remember, the focus is on connecting oral language to print.

What follows is the fun part for me!  The best way to develop COW is by playing with words, sentences, and a large assortment of pointers. There are so many fun pointers available through the Dollar Tree.  For spring, I have a few flyswatters with ladybugs and butterflies on them. The pointers in the greatest demand in my room are most definitely my light sabers, but magic wands are very popular too. As you work with the poem, you want to hit on sightwords and beginning sounds with those who are ready. With kids at the undeveloped/rudimentary stage, you'll work on the concept of space...white space between words and spacing of letters to form word.

When working with my Kinders on pointing, I place a touch point under each word.  I discovered this tip when I downloaded freebies from Sparklebox.co.uk .  I downloaded short vowel word cards for a game that included a dot under each sound. I had an light bulb moment and thought why not apply that strategy to COW. As we continue to develop COW, I put my students more and more into leveled books.  I continue to use this strategy with projected books on Reading A to Z and with other powerpoint resources I've made.  If you are a primary teacher, Reading A to Z is a subscription that is well worth the price.   The projectable feature has been very beneficial to my students for modeling and practice, but there are many other resources for beginning readers available on the site.  You can explore that further here in a blog post I wrote recently for Adventures in Literacy Land.

Matching words in isolation to words in context is another activity that fosters an understanding of print. Teachers can use different fonts with the word cards. Using Dolch words with various games helps students to identify them in context too and helps students recognize when their tracking is off. Marie Clay refers to Concept of Word as "Reading the White Space", and this activity has helped my students recognize this.  I model how to separate words by cutting between them like pulling apart puzzle pieces.  In fact, we often take the pieces, mix them up, and reorganize them to make the individual words become the line of the poem.

After we have worked a few days with the sentences strips and words in isolation, I transfer my students to the book form.  With the book form of the poems, I spend time on letter identification, sighword identification, using picture clues, and even comprehension.  The children enjoy highlighting, boxing, underlining, and marking with mini stickies features I ask. We also mark by boxing around the letters by name and sound.

With my students, I typically work with a poem for a 3-5 days depending on the poem's difficulty. The last thing I do with my students is give them the poem on a single sheet.  We practice reading without the aid of touch points, highlights, boxes, etc.  I have them prepare the poetry page for their keepsake book, and as the year goes, the poems we use increase in difficulty.  Our kindergarten teachers use thematic teaching, so the poems I choose to use with my groups typically parallel what is happening in the regular classroom.  I do not use the same poems in my room though because I try to provide them with new experiences to build upon skills that are developing in the classroom.  Plus, new poems keep the learning fresh and fun.

The poem used in this post is a freebie from my store. If you'd like to add this poem to your COW collection, feel free to download your own copy using the image below which shows what is included or click [here].

I also have a Fall, Winter, and Spring collection available in my store. Each set includes 12 poems that fit the season as well as some that can be used any time of year.  Here is a preview of the Spring edition.  Topics include leprechauns,Spring, Easter, ducks, farming, gardening, flowers, butterflies, frogs, Mother's Day and Father's Day, trees/reading, and weather.

$5.50

Thanks so much for visiting today. For additional poetry resources, I hope you'll drop by [my blog] to catch Thematic Thursday, a weekly linky party I host.  The theme this week is poetry, and in the past few weeks, we've explored insects, frogs, weather and many other spring themes. I am thrilled to be part of this blog. The group has great posts coming for you on a variety of topics, so I hope you stop back often.

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Poetry Analysis Activities

Hi, everyone!  It is Andrea from Reading Toward the Stars.  I am so excited to be a part of this super awesome blogging community!  I can't wait to share so many ideas with all of you, our readers!

Today I want to share some fun things to do with poetry.  With April being Poetry Month, I thought this is a perfect opportunity to share some ideas to do with poetry.

As a reading specialist, I spend my time working with struggling readers who need that extra boost.  I spent the first 14 years of my career working with 3rd and 4th graders, so that is my niche.  My third graders have been working on poetry, so I found this to be the perfect time to help them with analyzing poetry.

First, I let them choose which poetry book they wanted to read.  I got these from Scholastic many years ago and use them every year.

After they read at least 5 poems out of the book (about 15 minutes), they worked on the various activities.

On the first day, they just answered questions on the green sheet with each other.  I loved listening to the conversations they were having.  The best was when they started recommending poems to each other!

The second day they read for another 15 minutes (at least 5 poems) and completed the scavenger hunt with one of the poems they read.

On the third day, they read another 5 poems or 15 minutes worth.  They completed the main idea and visualization activity.

They really had a lot of fun doing all of these activities, and they helped them to see how poetry has meaning and a main idea.  This is something they really struggle with, so I hope that it helps a lot.

If you click {here} or on the picture below, you can grab a copy of the activities for free from my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

Don't forget to enter our awesome giveaway! We've teamed up to offer a big giveaway for our blog launch. 3 lucky winners will enjoy some awesome teacher swag! Each bundle is valued at $100! Enter the giveaway for your chance to win.

This giveaway is only available to teachers in the contiguous United States since it is a shipped item. Please read the complete terms on the rafflecopter giveaway for additional information.

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See you again in about month here or over on my own blog, Reading Toward the Stars!

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