Fun with Poetry!

I am participating in #sol18. Thanks to the twowritingteachers blog team for creating this writing community!

There are many reasons to include poetry in reading and writing workshop and across the day. The rich vocabulary, the imagery and figurative language, the variety of forms and structures all make poetry study appealing. During poetry month, give students a chance to appreciate poetry and read it aloud to hear the music poetry offers to its readers. Students can find mentor poems and poets to imitate. Students need opportunities to:

• read some poems without an expectation to “do” anything. Just breathe them in and out.
• choose their own poems to explore and talk about with others.
• type or write out poems that “speak to them” in their notebooks.
• write out lines they like—for sound, as trigger for thought, for image, for memories they evoke.
• read poems more than once and revisit poems they’re attracted to for different reasons.
• read different types of poems, different authors, to deepen their understanding and welcome challenges.
• give voice by reading poems aloud that they have found and poems they have composed, individually and in chorus with others.

*Many of these selections can be used in primary grades as well.

Poetry Annotations-Grade 3

Heard, Georgia. (1992) Creatures of Earth, Sea and Sky. Boyds Mills Press. Honesdale, PA

• Dressing Like a Snake: point of view, personification, rhyme, question, inference, metaphor
• Fishes: poetry for 2 voices, exact nouns, proper nouns, fluency, strong verbs, simile

Larrick, Nancy (1968) Piping Down the Valleys Wild. Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. NY, NY

• Leaves  simile, personification, inference, un-rhymed
• Mice point of view, question, rhyme, rhythm, topic sentence & supporting details, inference
• Birthday Cake  rhyme, questions, inference, compare/contrast
• Modern Dragon  metaphor, inference, rhyming couplets, strong verbs
• A Dragonfly  rhythm, rhyme, simile, vocabulary
• The Squirrel rhyme, strong verbs, use of sentence structure, simile, onomotopoiea, inference
• Bumblebee rhyme, simile, vocabulary, onomatopoeia, fluency, inference

Poetry Annotations-Grade 4

 Heard, Georgia. (1992) Creatures of Earth, Sea and Sky. Boyds Mills Press. Honesdale, PA

• Bat Patrol: simile, alliteration, effective repetition, strong verbs, vocabulary, inference
• Frog’s Serenade: onomatopoeia, poetry for 2 voices, fluency, hyphenated adjectives
• Dragonfly: strong verbs, exact nouns, use of colon, hyphenated adjectives, metaphor, vocabulary, un-rhymed.

Larrick, Nancy (1968) Piping Down the Valleys Wild. Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. NY, NY.

• On A Snowy Day: personification, extended rhyme, inference, metaphor
• The Moon’s the North Wind’s Cooky: personification, rhyme, metaphor, ellipsis, inference, compare/contrast
• Easter: simile, rhyme, personification
• Dandelion: extended metaphor, personification, un-rhymed, alliteration, question, exclamation
• City: compare, contrast, metaphor, personification, rhyme, inference
• Lewis Has A Trumpet: repetition, rhyme, internal rhyme, inference, simile, onomatopoeia, point of view

Poetry Annotations-Grade 5

 Larrick, Nancy (1968) Piping Down the Valleys Wild. Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. NY, NY

• Pencil and Paint: personification, rhyme, vocabulary, visualization, compare/contrast
• Some People: compare/contrast, simile, rhyme, inference, draw conclusions, theme
• The Eagle: vocabulary, setting, rhyme, rhythm, personification, simile, strong verbs, visualization, alliteration, inference
• Concrete Mixers: simile, metaphor, vocabulary, hyphenated adjectives, strong verbs, point of view
• Dandelion: extended metaphor, personification, un-rhymed, question, exclamation