Poetry Month is April! It will be here next week! I love teaching poetry to my first graders. Really, I love teaching Writing Workshop and all aspects of it. I think because I always loved Writing in school. I was horrible at Math but very strong in Language Arts. Over the years, I've simplified writing poetry so that my first graders can enjoy it and feel successful with it. Poetry is also great for struggling writers, mainly because there is no "correct way" to write a poem. Punctuation and capital letters are not emphasized like they are when we do narrative writing.
We began our unit of study by browsing some poetry books. I typically go to the public library and get a big stack of poetry books. Below are a few of my favorites...the sillier the better! I place a few books at each table and have kids browse and then rotate every few minutes.
After we've had some time to look at/read the poetry books, we come back together and make an anchor chart that tells what we saw. We've had our Poem of the Week all year, so the kids are familiar with the flow of poetry. They were excited to see all different types of poems in the books they browsed!
We always begin with rhythm poetry because it's simple and the kids eat.it.up! Because it was near St. Patrick's Day, we wrote a festive rhythm poem together: "Shamrock in the Grass."
The next day, we reviewed rhythm poetry and the kids had a chance to try one on their own! We came up with a list of possible rhythm poems for those that would have trouble thinking of an idea. The kids rhythm poetry always blows me away! Super creative. I believe that just 2 students used an idea off the list!!
After we wrapped up rhythm poetry, we moved onto acrostic poetry. Making an acrostic poems about SPRING {and adding a craft element} is one of my favorite activities to do in this unit!
We moved onto "I LIKE" poetry. This is such a simple type of poetry that the kids enjoy. I modeled one about food first, using a graphic organizer. This helps the children collect their thoughts before transferring their poems onto the regular poetry paper.
We began our unit of study by browsing some poetry books. I typically go to the public library and get a big stack of poetry books. Below are a few of my favorites...the sillier the better! I place a few books at each table and have kids browse and then rotate every few minutes.
We always begin with rhythm poetry because it's simple and the kids eat.it.up! Because it was near St. Patrick's Day, we wrote a festive rhythm poem together: "Shamrock in the Grass."
The next day, we reviewed rhythm poetry and the kids had a chance to try one on their own! We came up with a list of possible rhythm poems for those that would have trouble thinking of an idea. The kids rhythm poetry always blows me away! Super creative. I believe that just 2 students used an idea off the list!!
After we wrapped up rhythm poetry, we moved onto acrostic poetry. Making an acrostic poems about SPRING {and adding a craft element} is one of my favorite activities to do in this unit!
We moved onto "I LIKE" poetry. This is such a simple type of poetry that the kids enjoy. I modeled one about food first, using a graphic organizer. This helps the children collect their thoughts before transferring their poems onto the regular poetry paper.
We'll continue on with poetry the week after break and get ready for our annual "Poetry Cafe!" To check out my best-selling poetry pack! I created it for 1st grade but it would work well with kindergarten or 2nd grade students!
xo
Megan
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