EDSITEment - Lesson Plan

I asked the class to write a poem together, everybody contributing one line. The way I conceived of the poem, it was easy to write, had rules like a game, and included the pleasures without the anxieties of competitiveness. No one had to worry about failing to write a good poem because everyone was only writing one line; and I specifically asked the children not to put their names on their line. Everyone was to write the line on a sheet of paper and turn it in; then I would read them all as a poem.
-- Kenneth Koch, from Wishes, Lies, and Dreams

Introduction

When children hear, write, and recite poetry, they understand more deeply the qualities of verse — the importance of sound, compactness, internal integrity, imagination and line. Working collaboratively on poetry provides a safe structure for student creativity.

Using resources available through EDSITEment, make poetry exciting for your students as they listen to, write and recite poems that are sure to please.

Learning Objectives

After completing the lessons in this unit, students will be able to:

Create lines of poetry in response to poems read aloud.
Identify musical elements of literary language, such as rhymes or repeated sounds.
Recite short poems or excerpts.

Guiding Questions:

What do we learn about the nature of poetry from hearing poems read aloud? How can the work of well-known poets inform student poetry writing? What has to be taken into consideration when performing a poem?

Preparing to Teach this Lesson

Review each lesson in this unit and select archival materials you'd like to use in class. Bookmark these materials, along with other useful websites, if possible; download and print out selected documents and duplicate copies as necessary for student viewing.

The poetry templates used in this unit (Lesson 2) are also available from EDSITEment in PDF format. Download the Adobe Acrobat Reader. You may wish to download the templates and make copies for students to use in their individual or group work on poems; you could also copy the templates onto overhead film and display them for writing poetry as a whole class.

The collaborative writing of a class poem is a non-threatening approach for introducing students to poetry writing. Students contribute one sentence or less, yet feel the pride of accomplishing an entire poem.

Poetry can be an exciting classroom activity when poems remain the center of the learning. Focus on the poem itself, rather than generalizations about the nature of poetry. The activities to follow allow for many teachable moments of content about poetry (rhyme, meter, form). Only you can determine what is most appropriate for your class.

While conducting this unit, you will serve as a model for your students by reading poems with enthusiasm and understanding, contributing to the writing of poems, and remaining actively involved in the design of the class's poetry recitations. Your interest and personal touch will help engage and motivate students to appreciate and enjoy poetry.

This lesson plan offers a variety of activities and resources (including links to child-friendly poems available online and recommendations of useful books) to enable you to locate material appropriate for your class. Using a variety of poems will encourage students to form their own relationship with the genre of poetry. Given the great variety of poems and poetry-writing techniques offered, as well as the unpredictable nature of student responses, remain flexible, but focused as you present this lesson to students.

Poems appeal to the senses. Involving the senses as part of your teaching strategy will increase the likelihood of appealing to students with a variety of learning styles and abilities. When the students come in from the rain, read "Weather" by Eve Merriam. Use R.L. Stevenson's "Block City" after the students have been working with blocks.

Look for opportunities to create poetry assignments around curriculum content. For example, one "rule" for a collaborative poem could be, "Write a line with a vocabulary word from our reading lesson."

The following resources, available on the EDSITEment-reviewed website The American Academy of Poets, provide background on teaching poetry to younger students (Note: Though these excerpts are directed to the intermediate grades, reading Koch's remarks will help you understand how to work with poetry in any classroom.):
- Jim Trelease: Excerpts from "The Read-Aloud Handbook"
- Kenneth Koch: Excerpts from "Rose, Where Did You Get That Red?"

Geared to the primary grades, Wishes, Lies, and Dreams, by Kenneth Koch (Harper Perennial Library, 2000; ISBN 0060955090), offers a much more complete investigation of class collaborations than is possible here, plus many assignment suggestions and examples of student work.

Suggested Activities

Lesson 1: Listening to Poetry
Lesson 2: Writing Poetry
Lesson 3: Choral Readings for Poems
Extending the Lesson

Lesson 1 Listening to Poetry

Begin the unit by reading poems aloud to the class, one or more per day for a few days. This reading can be done during the traditional story time or whenever appropriate. When you read a poem for the first time, students should simply listen. If desired, use a motivator — a read aloud, a picture, an experience — to establish an anticipatory set. If you plan to pass out copies of a poem, wait until after the first reading and the brief discussion that follows.

Read each poem at least twice. In classes with strong volunteer readers, encourage students to read small sections of the piece to create a second reading (or third, if the poem is brief and a second reading by you is most appropriate). Different voices will bring something different to each reading.

After the first reading, ask students to tell what they noticed about the poem. What word or lines "jumped out" at them? All answers are correct; students are simply telling what happened to them as they listened to the poem. When appropriate, students can be asked to hypothesize why particular elements were memorable. Look for teachable moments here, but be brief and to the point.

Should a student cite "checkerberry cheddar chew" from Jack Prelutsky's "Bleezer's Ice Cream" as memorable, you might point out the "ch" sound that begins each word. In some classrooms, it might be appropriate to add that poets call such patterns alliteration. The best terms to introduce are those that will make discussing poetry easier. Use these terms yourself when you talk about poetry. Keep enjoyment of the poem itself the top priority.

Before the second reading, if desired, ask the class to listen for something in particular, especially an element brought into the discussion by a student. For example, if someone had pointed to a funny line, ask the students to listen for other lines they think are funny.

After the second reading, ask the students what they notice or remember this time. If you asked the class to listen for something specific, find out what students noticed.

The following books contain poems ideal for reading aloud in class. The books listed in the Other Resources section also contain poems suitable for reading aloud.

Bennett, Jill. Noisy Poems. Oxford University Press, 1989. (ISBN 0192782193)
Alliteration-oriented poems kids enjoy. Noisy Poems can be a great tool when your kids study letters/sound/senses.

Korman, Bernice and Gordon Korman. The D- Poems of Jeremy Bloom: A Collection of Poems About School, Homework, and Life (Sort Of). Scholastic, 1992. (ISBN 0590448196)

Silverstein, Shel. Where the Sidewalk Ends. HarperCollins Children's Books, 1973. (ISBN 0060256672)

The following poems, available online through EDSITEment resource The Academy of American Poets, were written specifically for young people or have been traditional staples in the elementary classroom. Choose poems appropriate to your particular group.

"Be Glad Your Nose Is on Your Face" by Jack Prelutsky
Show a picture of some animals and their "noses." In insects, the sense of smell is located chiefly in the antennae. Most amphibians (the group that includes frogs, toads and salamanders) sense smell using an organ inside their mouths. Ask the students if anyone among them has ever banged his/her nose against something. Where else could our noses be located to avoid such accidents? As you read the poem, make sure to put humorous emphasis on the last line of each of the middle stanzas to demonstrate how each caps its verse. For example, show the class through your reading how unpleasant it would be to "be forced to smell your feet."

"Bleezer's Ice Cream" by Jack Prelutsky
This is a terrific poem to use when making ice cream in class. You may wish to ask students to bring in empty ice cream cartons from home to help create a list of flavors. Which of Bleezer's flavors are familiar? Which are probably not real? Recite the list of flavors as though they are all appealing. Read the poem again, reacting in your own way to the various flavors.

"Fifteen, Maybe Sixteen Things to Worry About" by Judith Viorst
Read Viorst's "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day" (1972) aloud to establish an anticipatory set. What could make today a good day or a bad day? What would Alexander worry about? During one of the readings of the poem, students can count to see how many things to worry about there really are in the poem. Are there 15 worries or 16? Read each worry as if it really might happen.

"I'm Nobody! Who Are You?" by Emily Dickinson
Read as if you're telling a secret.

"Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll
Make sure you have a sense of what "happens" in the poem so that you have a clear notion of the meaning of every nonsense word. Use a few nonsense words as you direct the class to prepare for a read-aloud. Read the poem as if you're relating a tall tale of your own heroism — stand up and brandish your imaginary sword.

"The Land of Nod" by Robert Louis Stevenson
Let students talk about dreams. During the first or second reading, stop before the last word of the second line of each couplet. Can students guess the next word?

"Learning" by Judith Viorst
Is the "I" pleased or displeased about what s/he is learning?

"Mary's Lamb" by Sarah Josepha Hale
Let students recite what they know of the poem. This is the less familiar complete version. Stop after "To see a lamb at school." What do the students think will happen?

"Thinking in Bed" by Dennis Lee
Make sure your reading shows the "I" is giving serious thought to the problem of remembering who s/he is.

Other recommendations may be found at:

Selected Poems, on the EDSITEment resource The Academy of American Poets

Recommended Poems: Lists and Links: More Great Poems, also on The Academy of American Poets

Streaming audio/video recitations of the following poems are available on The Favorite Poem Project, a link from the EDSITEment resource Internet Public Library

"The Sloth" by Theodore Roethke
Show the class a picture of a sloth.

"Casey at the Bat" by Ernest Lawrence Thayer
This old chestnut has some difficult language, but it is read here by an 11-year-old baseball fan whose story is sure to interest sports-minded students.

"Block City" by R. L. Stevenson
If your students work with blocks, read this poem as they create.

After a few days, begin the poetry writing and recitation activities that follow; continue to introduce poems to the class throughout the year.

Writing sessions should be based on a model poem, read aloud to the class as in Lesson 1. (Note: Poetry templates included in this lesson are also available on EDSITEment in PDF format; download the Adobe Acrobat Reader) The model should suggest a starting "rule" (or rules) for individual lines of poetry, which will be composed by each member of the class. The class can add to the rule, as desired. For example, if the model poem dictates that each line must contain a color followed by the word "as" and a comparison, the class might add that the color should refer to something in the classroom. The result might be something like this:

As your students continue to hear and write poetry throughout the year, give them opportunities to participate in recitations by the whole class, small groups or individuals. "Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices," by Paul Fleischman, written for students age 9 to 12, serves as a terrific model for choral reading of poems.

The following poems, all available on EDSITEment-reviewed websites, work well as group recitations. Make sure the title and author are always recognized as part of a recitation.

Have students create individual poetry anthologies including original work, favorite published poems and illustrations. Consider having technically savvy students build a Web page for their poetry using an HTML editor.

Invite a local poet into your classroom to share with the students and to listen to their work. Poet-in-the-classroom programs are widespread.

Look for ways to use poetry throughout the curriculum. For example, if you cover ecology and the problem of waste disposal, Shel Silverstein's "Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would Not Take the Garbage Out" might be a good starting point for discussion.

Once your students are experienced poets, consider a field trip to a local art museum. Give students the opportunity to react to art with poetry. If students choose a work of art that inspires them, take some time later to discuss what inspires people to write poetry (or to create art for that matter). What inspired the students about each particular work? How did that inspiration lead to a poem?

Link poetry, art and research with student-created "wonder books." In their wonder books, students make drawings of and list observations concerning things that they wonder about. They then conduct research and use non-fiction/fiction/poetry to report on their findings.

Academy of American Poets http://www.poets.org/index.cfm: Recommended Poems: Lists and Links: More Great Poems
http://www.poets.org/exh/parts.cfm?prmID=82#morepoems; Seussville
http://www.randomhouse.com/seussville/
Internet Public Library http://www.ipl.org: Favorite Poem Project
http://www.favoritepoem.org/

Other Resources:

Recommended reading from Carol Hurst's Children's Literature Page, a link from Internet Public Library

Bryan, Ashley. ABC of African-American Poetry. Atheneum, 1997. (ISBN 0689812094)
Foster, John. Another First Poetry Book. Oxford, 1988. (ISBN 019917119X)
Foster, John. Another Fourth Poetry Book. Oxford, 1989. (ISBN 0199171254)
Foster, John. Another Second Poetry Book. Oxford, 1988. (ISBN 0199162298)
Worth, Valerie. All the Small Poems and Fourteen More. Illustrated by Natalie Babbitt. Farrar, 1994. (ISBN 0374302111)

All Together Now: Collaborations in Poetry Writing

Introduction

Learning Objectives

Guiding Questions:

Preparing to Teach this Lesson

Suggested Activities

Extending the Lesson

Selected EDSITEment Websites