National Poetry Month is coming, although now with the emphasis that the
Common Core State Standards puts on nonfiction it's become more like poetry
fortnight. And technically I had to
teach it at the beginning of March, but nevermind! There has always been a poem on the fourth
grade MCAS test, from 2004 onward. So because
our reading program has very little poetry in it, I made an executive decision
and decided to teach my poetry unit, but
with a few "tweaks."

During our immersion phase, kids read TONS of different
types of poems with different styles and themes. I asked them to pay attention to:
*How they look
*How they sound
*Why they think the poem was written
*Their favorites and why they like them
Once students understood more about what poetry is and started to get an appreciation for some (not necessarily all) types, I got into the meat and potatoes of the unit: poetic devices. Over the years, there seems to be the same 6 terms asked again and again. So this year I created an anchor chart with those 6 poetry terms (if you like the anchor chart, I've created a student handout and added it to the PREVIEW of my poetry mini unit. The unit itself is a priced item, but the preview is free to download).
Once students understood more about what poetry is and started to get an appreciation for some (not necessarily all) types, I got into the meat and potatoes of the unit: poetic devices. Over the years, there seems to be the same 6 terms asked again and again. So this year I created an anchor chart with those 6 poetry terms (if you like the anchor chart, I've created a student handout and added it to the PREVIEW of my poetry mini unit. The unit itself is a priced item, but the preview is free to download).
![]() | |
Some of the poetic devices can be related to understanding
fictional prose as well, such as mood, comparison, and inferring the author's
meaning. So those terms have already
been reintroduced and spiraled throughout the year, but during our unit on
poetry they become magnified!

This year I also projected cool images onto the computer screen to get them talking even more (it's as simple as google image searching "green picture," just screen them before showing them to the kids). We wrote the nouns (objects) on yellow paper, the verbs (movements) on blue paper, and the emotions (usually adjectives) on orange paper. Identifying the parts of speech is the best way I know how to incorporate grammar into a poetry unit!
The results are short pieces that have so much going on so quickly that they can make the reader feel like they are dreaming!
Finally, we spent time talking about comparisons. They could all relate to those Geiko ads
that promise, "Our customers are happier than..." I asked them to underline them in poems they
read. For some kids, we stuck with using
color in their writing (as green as grass) and for my deeper thinkers, we used
emotion (as angry as a scalded cat).






No comments :
Post a Comment