Poetry Month is Every Month: Using Poems to Teach Foundational Reading Skills

Playful, lyrical, musical, moving,
Hopeful, joyful, anguished, blue.
Concentrated yet expansive, 
To the norm they may not hew.
Read in classrooms and on stages,
Through the ages, old and new.
Small but mighty, I applaud them, and
Wonder if you laud them, too. 
        -M.W.


Why Use Poems?
For me, a poem is like a pop-up book, or maybe Yoda and a can of Popeye’s spinach. A poem is minute but mighty, compressing a ton of surprise, wisdom, and fortifying energy into a small space.

Efficient and powerful, poems are perfect for teaching, and then having students practice, a wide variety of important literacy elements, including comprehension through close reading, asking and answering questions, genre and author study, vocabulary building, grammar and sentence structure study, phonic-spelling patterns, fluency, and speaking and listening. Additionally, poems are relatively easy to find and manage. They can be used for shared reading, guided reading, and independent reading. Finally, most children find poems engaging and enjoy reading and presenting them. I attribute this to the brevity, rhythm, and rhymes of poems, as well as their ability to evoke a wide variety of feelings and wonderment. When striving readers fluently read and then present poems to others, they gain a real sense of accomplishment and success
. 
All in all, poems are an effective tool for teaching primary grade reading. What follows are places to find them, thoughts on leveling them for differentiated teaching, and a flexible routine for using them to teach a variety of important early reading skills.

Where to Find Poems 
Old school nursery rhymes, traditional poems from years past, and poems from modern and contemporary authors are all at your fingertips, easily found online. Here are three sites to get you started. 

• Lit2Go website: sections of this website (part of the Educational Technology Clearinghouse) feature select poems from Robert Louis Stephenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses, the poems of Edward Lear and Lewis Carrol, and A Visit From St. Nicholas by Clement Clarke Moore. All poems have a readability level, word count, a few ideas for simple classroom activities, and an audio file of the poem being read clearly and expressively.
  •  https://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/59/a-childs-garden-of-verses-selected-poems/
• The Children’s Poetry Archive features a wide variety of poems, from profound to tragic to silly. There are featured poems and poets, easy to find and operate audio files of poets reading their own works, classroom materials, exercises and ideas for writing and performing poetry, and sections devoted to specific age bands. You’ll want to check out ages 5 to 7 and 7 to 9, for sure. 
  • https://childrens.poetryarchive.org
• Last but certainly not least, The Poetry Foundation runs an amazing poetry site. Lovers of poetry can lose themselves in its web pages for hours at a time. A large section of the site is devoted to the curation of poems appropriate for children. Within this section live scores of poems, searchable by topic (such as nature or birthdays), form (from haiku to sonnet), and time period.  
  • https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/browse#page=1&sort_by=recently_added&filter_poetry_children=1

By The Way: Shakespeare for 3rd Graders
I found this Renaissance classic in the Poetry Foundation’s children’s section. In mid-October, pass out the witchy-poo pointer fingers, model a good ghoul voice, and let your third graders have at it. By Halloween, some will be clamoring to present!

Published poetry collections are the ultimate source of classroom text. Collections often include upwards of 100 or more poems meaning you can generate a collection of appropriate poems for your class in no time. Here’s a list of twelve respected and beloved children’s authors and a poetry collection from each to get you started.

Collecting and Storing Poems 
Between well-stocked websites and comprehensive print collections, you can amass dozens of poems for kids to read in a short amount of time. Storing them as PDFs or word document files allows for easy sharing with other teachers. For use during shared reading time, print poems on poster-sized sheets or present them on SmartBoard slides. For guided and independent reading, copy poems as single sheets.

My mother, now retired, presented two poems a week to her first graders. During my years in third grade, I presented about three poems a month. But knowing what I know now (the power of poetry, the myriad ways it can be used), whenever I teach children, I use three or four poems every two weeks. Presenting a number of poems allows you to differentiate for different reading levels, provides numerous possibilities for classroom activities, gives students choices on what they read, and provides options when creating personal poetry anthologies for each student (more on this at the end of this section).

Loosely Leveling Poems
Leveling poems enables a number of instructional best practices, including providing choice, challenge, and support. Some poems come with a Lexile or grade level. For those that don’t, you can type a poem into a website or word document and generate an ATOS or  Flesch-Kinkaid grade level and readability score. But I find these scores are often misleading, sometimes egregiously so. That’s why I roughly determine the appropriateness of a poem for any particular group of students by considering the following:

• Vocabulary load;
• Sentence structure;
• Total number of words; and, 
• Number of different phonic patterns presented. 

​
To illustrate, here are two poems I might present to second graders:

Comparing these two poems, I see that although Macaroni and Cheese has a complex layout (the poem is written for two or more readers), it has half the number of words of Bed in Summer, fewer phonic patterns, more repeated words, more contemporary language, and relatively simple subject matter. Thus, I think Macaroni and Cheese would be appropriate for readers who need more support. Meanwhile, the Stephenson poem would be appropriate for shared reading because its meaning is more complex, its subject matter more nuanced, it would lead to more questioning and inferring, and some of my striving readers might find its number of words frustrating to read without support. Finally, I would assign the Stephenson poem to my more advanced readers for independent reading, although I would give all my students the choice to read both. 

Routine for Teaching Reading Skills Through Poems
After I have decided on the two or three poems I want to use, I generally follow this 3-day routine to teach a variety of reading skills, from applying comprehension strategies to noticing phonic patterns and re-reading for fluency.

First Day  (15 t0 20 minutes)

• Using the upper level poem, talk about the title and pre-teach vocabulary words using direct and explicit instruction. Have a quick discussion about how the day length changes with the seasons.. All of this is to build knowledge (topic, background, vocabulary) before reading.
• Next, read the poem three times using the I Read, We Read, You Read method (direct and explicit with gradual release). After the first I Read reading, point out any rhyming words and discuss the patterns.
• After I Read, We Read, You Read, discuss the poem using shared reading / interactive read aloud techniques. Focal points for modeling and discussion could be text-to-text connections, thin and thick questions, visualizing, and so on. Read a section of the poem, think out loud (such as “I think the author is trying to..” or “I see that this sentence connects back to the beginning where…”), and ask questions, such as, “What do you think this means?”, and “What is the author trying to say here?”

Second Day (10 t0 15 minutes)

• Using the mid-level and/or lower level poem, pre-teach vocabulary words and word structure  and point out rhyming words and discuss their patterns.
• Next, read the poem three times using the I Read, We Read, You Read method (direct and explicit, gradual release).
• If a poem lends itself to movement and/or some type of dramatic effect while reading (such as a poem for two or more voices), I would fold this into my instruction. 
• After the students have read the poems (You Read), I might ask a comprehension question that speaks to the focus of my comprehension skills for the week. For example, if I was focusing on activating prior knowledge, I might ask, “What do you think about in your own life to help you understand this poem?”

Third Day (10 t0 15 minutes)

• Have an appropriate number of 3-hole punched copies ready. For example, in a class of 20 students you might see 8 students as reading the upper level poem, 6 reading the mid-level, and 6 reading the lower. Also, have additional copies on hand in case students want to put another poem in their individual anthology.
• Keeping the pace brisk, in a whole group setting, and using a poster or SmartBoard slide, read each poem using I Read and We Read. No need to do You Read because they’ll have plenty of chances to do this in just a minute.
• Next, pass out individual poems for fluency practice. Students receive the poem that is most appropriate for their current achievement level.
• Using a quiet or “1-inch” voice, students practice reading their poem at their desks for one minute. If a student says, “I’m done,” or if he stops reading, “Say, practice again. Time is not yet up.” Prompt students to work on perfection of expression, phrasing, and accuracy.
• Students pair up and using a quiet or “1-inch” voice, they take turns presenting their poem to each other. This lasts for two minutes. If students say, “We’re done,” or if they stop reading, prompt them as you did for solo reading.
• Students go back to their seats and read their poem one last time. Some may want to use a whisper phone or paintbrush.
• Randomly call on two to three students. When called upon, they can either “pass” or present to the class. 
• After each presentation, directly and explicitly describe any reading behavior  you want to highlight and praise, such as effort, accuracy, phrasing, expression that demonstrated meaning, a strong voice, etc.
• After each presentation, have the class give a round of applause or other cheer. 

Practicing poems independently and in groups

Presenting poems

Personal Poetry Anthologies 
Personal poetry anthologies grow and expand as the months goes by, reflecting a child’s personal preferences. Each poem in the anthology provides an opportunity for students to re-read and build fluency during independent reading time, as well as share their reading with others.

Regardless of whether you use the 3-day routine (given previously) or not, put the poems each child has read into a 3-ring binder with his or her name on it. If students are able to do their own 3-hole punching and operate a binder, then so much the better. I give students the option to take a second or even a third poem, each one typically at a different level of difficulty. Thus, after two months, some children will have a dozen poems in their anthology while others may have only four or five.
​
If your budget and/or storage space is limited, you can store poems in a two-pocket folder with or without fasteners. If you don’t use fasteners, I suggest you gradually staple the poems into packets of six to eight poems (so papers don’t go flying if the poems fall out). Illustrating the cover of the poetry book is always a fun and engaging thing to do at home or in the classroom.

What can a child can do with her poetry anthology? Here's a list of poetry reading possibilities: During independent reading time, read your poetry anthology...

• At your desk or in the cozy chair
• With a partner on the carpet, taking turns reading your favorite poems
• With a partner, reading every other line of one poem, taking turns
• In a trio, taking turns reading the sentences. Work to make your presentation perfect!
• With a whisper phone or paintbrush (see below)
• Dramatically, picking one poem to present with expression and movement

By The Way: Paintbrush Reading
Fluent reading unfolds smoothly, with expression, and in broad brushstrokes of phrasing. To drive the point home, consider putting out a can filled with small paintbrushes. Then allow your students (independently or in small or large groups) to grab a paintbrush and re-read a poem or passage by pulling the brush smoothly below each sentence as it is read. It’s a kinesthetic feedback trick that keeps kids engaged during re-reading. Read like a painter, not…like…a…pointer!

Re-reading a Judith Viorst poem. Pairs practicing paint brush reading

​
​Note for Parents and Teachers
To help with National Poetry Month, I’ve put free PDFs and sound files of some of my most popular poems online. Just go to this File Cabinet tab on this website (top of the page, immediately to the right of the blog tab). Then look in the right hand column. There you will find PDF poems and dramatic readings of A Bug, A Bug!, poems for two voices, like Nuh Uh! and Mac & Cheese, and more. The mp3s are super fun readings done by actors Chris Laitta & Biff Baron.