This article discussed the importance of using poetry to teach children about using emotions, and the importance of selecting words in writing. It stated that often times, teachers get caught up thinking that, in a poetry unit, the most important aspect is to expose students to sophisticated poetry from a hundred years ago. The article argued in favor of exposing students to a wide variety of poetry that they will be interested in. There are several 20th century poets that are worthy of being present in elementary classrooms and this is what teachers need to be reading to their students have them value poetry.
I would definitely use poetry in my first and second grade classroom! I have always been hesitant about poetry because I never liked adult poetry. I was always told that children’s poetry was not “real poetry” so I thought I didn’t like poetry. However, after reading this article, I realize that is not true. Children’s poetry is perfect for showing students how to rearrange words in their writing and how to write with emotion. I would implement poetry into our normal writer’s workshop time. Students are allowed to write about anything, and so they could write about anything in the form of poetry one week. Poetry would be a great lesson to teach strategies of word order and word choice. It would also be helpful for getting students to use their senses in their writing. Once students developed these skills in poetry, they would transfer into their everyday writing. As a professional teaching this, I would need to learn more about how to write good poetry myself. I would need to take workshops on incorporating emotion into writing, as well as word choice.
My unit that I will be teaching is a reading unit. However, using the students’ writing samples from writing workshop can help me determine what kinds of strategies they need to work on. If I could find books that use those strategies, my students would benefit in both reading and writing from my lessons!
Emily,
ReplyDeleteI can relate to what you were saying about poetry being something that you didn’t enjoy – I was always so focused on trying to decipher the meaning of poems that I never really liked reading or writing them. I also felt like I had to make them deep and meaningful and missed out on the fun part of poetry. Now that I am teaching, however, I have realized that I do really like children’s poetry. My unit for literacy will be Writer’s Workshop and we are focusing on writing poetry, so I have been reading many books to prepare and have found that they are great examples of language that students can relate to and enjoy. In regard to your post, I read the other article about poetry, so it was nice reading what yours had to say about the subject. I love the part that you included about writing emotion and having students use their five senses as they are writing their poems. I think these skills are very important to have as a writer and are (as you mentioned) definitely something that they will be able to transfer over to other genres. If you are interested in incorporating poetry into your Writer’s Workshop in the future, the Lucky Calkins book Poetry: Powerful Thoughts in Tiny Packages is an awesome resource. It contains the entire format of a workshop as well as the grade-appropriate mini-lessons that go with them. I have been using it to plan my unit and it is very helpful!