I would like to do poetry books in my classroom next year. For those of you that do this, what activities do you do daily with these poems? I know that they find sight words, etc. but an unsure what a week would look like with a poem? Do you give the students a copy of the poem on Monday, or end of the week? Do you do illustrations? Any information would be great
AWESOME website! Thanks for sharing. I just spent over an hour looking through all of the stuff! Lot's of great ideas! The teacher is sooo organized (more organized than I will ever be), and she has so many wonderful reources to pull from!
Thanks, that is actually the site that made me decide to use the poetry notebooks. She does not really go into detail of how she uses them however! Anyone use these that can explain to me what a week with the poem looks like?
I saw on Meacham's webpage (wow, an amazing site by the way!) that she glues the poem into a spiral notebook and has the students illustrate on the opposite page. I would also like to hear activities or lessons for the whole week.
Punctuation Marks. . .
Challenge students to find the punctuation marks. Circle periods, question marks, and exclamation points in red. Red means "STOP" and these marks STOP a sentence. Discuss what each punctuation mark means. Learn their names. We also highlight commas, as well as learn their name and function. We practice "taking a breath" when we read our poem/rhyme/chant/song - - whenever a comma is present. For quotation marks, we highlight them with blue or some other color that is different than red and yellow. We practice naming quotation marks and learning their function. We try to stay away from calling quotation marks "talking marks" - - although the children learn both names.
Sight Words. . .
Challenge students to find the sight words within the text. We highlight or circle them with green or blue. Caution students to not get sloppy when working with the text. Over zealous students tend to color the words too hard and have been known to color right through their paper or make the word so dark that it we can't read it after it was colored!
Read, Read, and Read. . .
Students benefit from repeated readings. Mix up the way that a poem is read by asking students to:
choral read the text
dramatize the text
Guess the Covered Word . .
Play "Guess the Covered Word" during the initial read through of the poem/chant/rhyme/song.
What an awesome website! I think I'm addicted. Thank you for sharing. I have been doing a poetry notebook with my first graders but this site has motivated me to try it her way.
Thank you Miss Gena for your postings and thoughts! I think my mind is on summer vacation however, and I am not properly wording my question. I guess what I am wondering is...how long do you spend, and what would a typical week look like? I love the activities on the website, but I am looking for how many days a week you do this, when you give them their own copy (first day, end of the week, etc.) I am assuming the artwork would be done near the end of the week? I love how she has pictures of all the poems online, I saw those in May and decided it would be a great way to incorporate art into L.A. time. Thoughts?
I usually spend 3 days with my poetry journals. This is like 10 minutes each session. The first, I distribute the poems, we choral, echo read, etc. The next day, we do the activities, underline sight words, etc. The final day, they illustrate and I draw names and the kids get to pick a poem to read from previous weeks.
You are wonderful! This makes sense to me. I think I was trying to make it a bigger part of the day than it is. I was wondering how you could spend 20 or so minutes a day on it, but 10 minutes a day is perfect, and doing it for a 3 day duration seems better than stretching it for a whole week!
I LOVE THAT WEBSITE THAT YOU POSTED!! However, I just spent the last 2 1/2 hours looking through the entire thing!!!! OMG, I am soooo tired!! There is so much information there it is incredible!! The creator of that web page deserves so much more than a thank you from us!! That is by far, the best sight I have EVER seen!!
I loved the website also--very impressive. I'd love to have time to do great stuff like that. I'm doing poetry notebooks this year, I'm trying to decide if the should glue in the poems or if I should just use a three prong folder? I'm afraid that they will glue the pages together and it will just become a sloppy mess? Any suggestions on what works for you?
This is the 2nd year that we have used poetry notebooks in 1st grade where I teach. This is what we do and it has worked well so far. However, I've picked up some ideas here that I really like today--thanks. (3 days on the poem, drawing a child's name and letting them choose a poem to read, and poem for homework one night). We begin by writing our poem on sentence strips and displaying them in a pocket chart. The first day I read the poem to them several times and we discuss what it is about. Day 2 - On the sentence strips, we identify (by highlighting with colored cellophane type transparencies) the capital letters and punctuation and talk about why they are there. Day 3 - rhyming words and word family chunks. Day 4 - We read the poem either chorally or clapping the rhythm. Day 5 - I give them their copy of the poem to put in their poetry notebook. They go back and highlight the things we have done earlier in the week and then illustrate the poem and put it in their poetry notebook. This has been fun and we also are learning about those word families, etc.
06-10-2007, 07:50 PM
It has motivated me to try poetry notebooks in the fall with my second graders.
I hear she's moving to first next year and I can't wait!! Bookmark it ladies!!
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