Poetry

In January we did a Unit of Study on Small Moment writing in Writing Workshop. After that we took a couple of weeks during which I let children work on whatever pieces inspired them.

Our most recent Unit of Study has been poetry. For my lessons I draw from resources such as Regie Routman's Kids' Poems: Teaching First Graders to Love Writing Poetry, Lucy Calkins and Stephanie Parson's Poetry: Powerful Thought in Tiny Packages, which is part of Units of Study for Primary Writing: A Yearlong Curriculum, and my frequent source of inspiration, About the Authors: Writing Workshop with our Youngest Writers by Katie Wood Ray with Lisa B. Cleaveland. When I read Regie Routman’s book some years ago, it inspired me to begin saving poetry from my students each year. Now I have a sizable collection of poetry by kids that we can study together to inspire our own poetry. I also draw on books such as Little Dog Poems by Kristine O’Connell George and Dark Emperor & Other Poems of the Night by Joyce Sidman.

At the end of our unit each student will choose one poem to put in our group’s poetry collection. I also get to choose one poem written by each student for the collection. We will edit and revise the poems using peer conferences and student/teacher conferences. I hope the booklet of poems will be ready in time to share on the upcoming Grandparents’ and Grandfriends’ Day with our visitors.

Poetry Study

Our most recent Unit of Study has been poetry. For my lessons I draw from resources such as Regie Routman's Kids' Poems: Teaching First Graders to Love Writing Poetry, Lucy Calkins and Stephanie Parson's Poetry: Powerful Thought in Tiny Packages, which is part of Units of Study for Primary Writing: A Yearlong Curriculum, and my frequent source of inspiration, About the Authors: Writing Workshop with our Youngest Writers by Katie Wood Ray with Lisa B. Cleaveland. I love Regie Routman’s emphasis on reading and talking about poetry by children. From Lucy Calkins and Stephanie Parsons I draw mini-lessons that help the children focus on specific aspects of poetry such as how to decide on line breaks. From Katie Wood Ray I get the basic structure I use in our study as we read various examples of poetry by both children and adults and discuss what we notice the authors doing in their poems. I also incorporate lessons of my own that I have developed over the years.

As always, some students “catch on” to poetry more quickly than others. Often some of the students who are most prolific with prose writing can be hesitant about poetry. Working together we help each other learn some of the ins and outs of this kind of writing. We talk about how important it is to read our poems out loud as we write them to get a feel for how they sound. As one students said, “I read it and it sounded more like a story so I changed it to make it sound more like a poem.” Another student talked about making her poem sound more “poety.”

At the end of our unit each student chose one poem to put in our group’s poetry collection. I also got to choose one poem written by each student for the collection. We then edited and revised the poems using peer conferences and student/teacher conferences. The booklet of poems was ready in time to share on Grandparents’ Day with our visitors, which made it extra special.

Writing Poetry

We have been reading and writing poetry the past few weeks. For my lessons I draw from resources such as Regie Routman's Kids' Poems: Teaching First Graders to Love Writing Poetry (I love her emphasis on reading and talking about poetry by children) and Lucy Calkins and Stephanie Parson's Poetry: Powerful Thought in Tiny Packages, which is part of Units of Study for Primary Writing: A Yearlong Curriculum. I also have lessons of my own that I have developed over the years.

It is an exciting time as we explore this very different way of looking at and writing about the world.

Poetry!

We have been working on writing poetry for a little over a week. Of course we have been reading poetry all year, but now the focus is on writing poems. For the past eight years I have been drawing a lot on Regie Routman's book, Kids' Poems: Teaching First Graders to Love Writing Poetry. I love her emphasis on reading and talking about poetry by children. Other children become the mentors for my group. About half the space in this book is taken up with poetry by first graders. She includes the original drafts which include invented spelling and any reworking the author did on paper. She also has the final typed-up and illustrated version.

Since I began using this book, I have collected poetry from my own students to use with my groups. I also have the anthologies that each year's group puts together. For the anthology each student can choose one poem she/he has written and I get to choose one. Some of the students that I taught last year have discovered the anthologies I have put out and are enjoying finding their poems from last year. Students also get excited when they find a poem that an older sibling wrote in past years.