Hendrick's Hoppy Pad

I absolutely love the Online Poem Generator. We are using it in my class this week. It makes poetry fun and doable for kids. I enjoyed perusing all of the poetry links. Many of them will benefit myself and the students in my classroom.

I Am the Mummy Heb-Nefert is an excellent trade book written in poetic language. The illustrations and the content make it ideal to integrate into history/social studies. Atlantic would be great to use in geography and history. The use of personification throughout, as well as the point of view make this book  a good one to use with 4th graders. I think my students would really enjoy Dirty Laundry Pile:Poems in Different Voices. My personal two favorites in the collection are The Mosquito’s Song and The Cow’s Complaint. Often times we encourage students to put themselves in the place of the character…what would they do…what do they think. This book allows the reader to hear the object or character and get more of a feel for who or what they are. The I poems in all 3 of the books are very appealing to me.

I’m excited about incorporating poetry into content. Mimi and I have discussed how beneficial it could be for our students in reference to new material. I am contemplating doing my Poetry Assignment on rocks and minerals, pirates, or electricity and magnetism.

While reading Kucan’s article I kept thinking about a KWL chart. The idea of using the I poem before, during, and after reading could be used to foster comprehension of informational text, much like the KWL.

I am looking forward to sharing more of what I have learned about poetry with my students.

Flicker Flash by Joan Graham is a fascinating book of poetry. Her integration of art and words with objects is very creative and pleasing to a reader’s eye. My two favorite poems in the book are Campfire and Lighthouse.

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I have always been the most comfortable with using acrostics in class when dealing with poetry. There are several novels that my grade level uses where we construct an acrostic to describe a particular character. However, I have never thought of making the acrostics rhyme, nor have I thought of using different variations. My favorite acrostic is “Impalas in Peril”. I think it’s my favorite, because it was like solving a puzzle to find the 5th arrangement!

Silver Seeds  was another cute example of how acrostics can be used. Poetry is often thought of as a difficult genre for students. I think Silver Seeds would be excellent to use with younger grades.

The first paragraph in the article Extending Acrostic  Poetry into Content Learning: A Scaffolding Framework definitely described the poetry experiences in my classroom. As I mentioned before, acrostics have been my poetic form of choice. I agree that modeling is crucial for students, as well as showing them that teachers struggle to compose their thoughts too. Although I have model acrostics, I have never “immersed” my students with acrostics by other poets. Honestly, I never realized that books like African Acrostics and Silver Seeds  existed. I can see where providing such examples would build the students’ knowledge base. I loved the example in the article of integrating acrostics and informational text. What a neat way for students to report what they have learned about a specific topic. Next month my class will do a study of Blackbeard and other pirates, and I can’t wait to incorporate acrostics into our unit. Great article!!!

In chapter 9 of Elliott’s text, I was reminded that in order for children to acquire poetic language they must borrow words from other writers. Students would benefit from having a place, like a journal, to collect their words for future use. They also need to be reminded often to refer to their collection of borrowed words when drafting and composing.

I have enjoyed reading the articles and text about poetry. To be honest, I have never spent a lot of time on the study of poetry in my classroom. Other than writing the occasional haikus and acrostics, I have not felt comfortable instructing my students in the genre of poetry. The “Love That Poetry” lesson makes teaching poetry seem so easy. I look forward to using it this year in my classroom. I even plan to share it with my grade level. Each of our 4th grade classrooms has a class set of Love That Dog that we have never used. Honestly none of us knew how to implement reading/writing instruction with the poetry novel. I like the way that simple novel ties in “Great Poets” and their works and uses their poetry as models. Love That Dog also shows students and teachers that despite fear and apprehension, anyone can be a poet. The ideas for constructing poems are endless, and numerous formats are introduced and modeled.

Myers’ Brown Angels, is a precious book. I like the way he collected photographs overtime, and used those photographs to write different types of poetry. The poetry accents the photographs and gives them meaning. The use of pictures to generate ideas and topics seems like a good way to get 4th graders interested in becoming poets themselves.

Sidman’s This is Just to Say: Poems of Apology and Forgiveness, is a unique collection of poetry. I like the way apologies connected with forgiveness later in the book. As I was reading it, I thought about how I could use this particular format in class. I think it would be neat to use it as a form of communication between teachers and students or students and parents. Students could have an ongoing poetry notebook where conversations are written in free verse. I could see the notebook being an outlet for many that would be afraid to express themselves verbally.

Chapter 10 of Elliott’s text,  “Integrating Poetry”, gave great examples of poetry that teachers could easily model for students. In class, we brainstorm all the time, but I have never wordstormed with my students and allowed them “to collect” words for later use to compile into poetry. I have given them lists of alternative words to use in narrative writing, but I can see that by allowing them to collect their own words, the words would be more meaningful to them.

The poem Coat Hangers in All the Small Poems reminded me of my laundry room and the struggle I have getting one hanger off the rack above my washer. It usually ends in a dangled, clanging mess! The Potatoes poem provided a unique description of that ordinary object.

Certo’s emphasis of using “great” poetry in her article made me asked myself, “Do my students have an appreciation for poetry?” The answer is probably no, because I haven’t exposed them to more sophisticated poetry. Students need repetitive great models in order to acquire the skills necessary to become good poets themselves.

The strategies and models in this week’s readings seem like they will alleviate and eliminate the stress associated with writing poetry for me. I can’t wait to implement some of the strategies from all of the readings in my classroom.