Poetry Unit

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Home : 2005 : May : 25

Poetry Unit
By Yanique Michaud

I actually did a really good poetry unit this past semester. I used the book "Rose Where did you get that red?" by Robert Koch (I think)

I got so many great reviews. My fifth graders would ask me everyday, "Are we going
to do poetry today".
So hear it is, I used the above book fo initial ideas and after you do a couple of his lessons, you will find that you are able to think of your own poems to read. Anyway, what would happen is I read "Love that Dog" as the intro to my poetry unit. It only took one hour to read, but the students need to see that the book is written as a poem. I then would pick

works like William Blake's "Tyger", read them the poem and then give them a prompt. For "Tyger" the prompt was that they were talking to an animal and they were asking the animal who created it. I choose "adult" poems because the children get really into reading poems that they think is too advanced for them. For mothers day we read Sonnet 18 by Shakespeare (Shall I compare thee to a summers day). I had them compare their mother to something but then say how she is better than it. They also read Walt Whitman and William Carlos Williams. The William Carlos Williams were cute. He is known for his short poems with one word on each line. We read three of his (all in Robert Kock's book).

In class I had them write limericks on St.Patricks Day. We also did a unit on the 1920's and I choose the poem Negro Speaks of Rivers (I changed "Negro" to "I") by Langston Hughes. They loved this one. I had them write a "History" Poem.

The whole time I emphasized that they did not need to rhyme. I think that it is essential to start with "Love that Dog" because the main character Jack hates poetry at the beginning but finds that he is a poet himself. He figures that poetry is like regular writing but that you skip lines. This expalnation of poetry is very non threatening to students and helps relieve the stress.

I did this for my student teaching and I actually wrote the unit up. If you are interested email me and I can send you a copy. The best thing to do is get that book "Rose, where did you get that red?". It is sooooooo detailed. It breaks down the questions you should ask the students and it gives you writing prompts. You will be so comfortable with teaching poetry, you will start coming up with yur own ideas in no time.