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Help Students Analyze Poetry and Enjoy It! {Grades 4-5}

Hi teacher friends!  April's poetry month is a short hop and a skip away.

You have to teach poetry to fourth and fifth graders but you may not have the time to prepare for dissecting poems.  There are 9 exemplar poems on the CCSS Poetry Exemplar List.  Yikes, that's a LOT and your prep time is limited.  Maybe you don't even LIKE poetry, let alone have to TEACH it.  Here's some hints that I hope help.

First you will want to learn about the POET:

• Research everything about the poet.
• What background can you learn about the poet?
• Who is he or she?
• Where is s/he from?
• What was s/he known for?
• What other poems has s/he written?
• What is the audience for the poems?
• What was his/her style?
• During what time period was this poem written?
• What elements of poetry does the poet emphasize?  Why?
• What may have caused the poet to write this particular poem?
• Has s/he written other similar poems?
• Dig deep! Take notes.

Now you need to learn about the poem:

• Start by first quickly reading the poem.
• Now re-read the poem, this time  read it for understanding.
• Then read the poem again, thinking about what the poet was (really) trying to say. 
• What is the meaning of the poem?
• What is the poem about?
• Where does it take place?
• Think through your teacher lens and make sense of the poem and consider what you would tell students.
• What is the message and theme?
• What is the poem's stanza structure? 
• Does the poet choose to use rhyming structure or not?  
• Why did the poet choose that structure?
• What about the rhyme scheme?
• How about the poet's use of alliteration, metaphors and similes?
• What other types of figurative language are used?  
• What other types of literary devices are used?
• What words are used and what do they mean?
• How does the poet use words to help convey mood and emotion?
• Look for vivid verbs and colorful adjectives to point out to your students.
• What emotion does the poem cause you to feel? 
• Do you enjoy the poem?  
• What makes you like or dislike it?
• How will you teach this to students?
• How will you assess student understanding?

There's SO much to teaching poetry but you have to do it right or your students won't enjoy it and that's just not okay!  {Quick Story!}  Here's a quick story about the importance of a teacher's love of their subject matter.  Did you have a teacher or professor in college that you loved?  If you did, it's likely because the teacher or prof had a passion and genuine interest in their subject matter.  I enjoyed  my high school French class, not so much because I loved French, but our teacher made it come to life.  He told us stories.  He made us laugh.  He made the subject matter come to life.  He didn't read slides or notes.  He talked to us.  He knew his stuff and he just talked to us and told stories connected to what we were learning.  Learning was fun in his class.  I actually went on to take French for a whole year in college and got a Bachelor of Arts (instead of a Bachelor of Science) because my teacher helped me love the subject matter.  I never dreamed I would do that but the inspiration from his class spurred me on.  YOU can be the storyteller that helps students understand why poets write and help them understand the deeper meaning of poems.  It's like a puzzle that needs solving!

Trust me on this; the more you know about the poet and the poem, the more you will be able to help students learn to read poetry and understand the (literal) words and the (figurative) word play.  I know it's not easy!  Some poems are hard to understand for adults.  Some of the poems on the 4th and 5th grade CCSS list are tough to interpret and I wondered how someone decided which poems were appropriate and understandable by 10 and 11 year olds?  Holy cow!  Think what those deep poems sound like to a student!  If they're tough for you to understand, you can empathize with your students as they struggle to grasp meaning.  You have to understand so you can help your students.  Don't short cut the steps of building your own background knowledge and understanding.  Read as many poems by the same author as you can so you get the poet's style and themes.

If you're STILL stressing about teaching poetry, and maybe don't have the time to devote to it, I suggest starting with one poet and poem. Then teach your socks off!

If you don't have time with the hectic year, don't worry.  I've got you covered!  I love teaching poetry and did all of the hard work for you!  If you're interested, I created 9 Poetry Analysis Task Card Sets for 4th & 5th Graders.  I bundled the task cards to save you money.  If you have teaching partners, additional licenses are a reduced price.  You can use one poem task card set each week and have a 9-week unit.  Or you can set up the task cards as a literature station.  Or you can use the tasks cards as direction instruction lesson starters then let students work in discussion groups or with partners to fill out the response booklet.   The choice is yours!  BUT whatever you do . . .  make learning poetry FUN!

Teaching poetry is one of my favorite ELA units of the year and it can be your students' favorite, too.

Here's a 30 second video that gives you a quick peek a the set. 

The bundled poetry analysis set includes everything you will need to teach all 9 poems.  The task card sets include a short poet biography summary.  I wrote task card questions and included sample response answers for each task card.  There's even a cool recording booklet that I designed to save paper for students to use.  It prints back to back and simply folds in half.  Website links are included so you can show students the videos, biographies, online versions of the poems and more.

Take the stress out of teaching poetry and start LOVING teaching poetry! 

Use Back to School Activities That Help Teach Character Traits

It's time for back to school and that means planning fun back to school get to know you activities that students haven't done before.  Plus, the first week activities you plan set the tone for your year.  I want students to know that they will be working together, doing projects and activities with other students and collaborating.  It's important to establish rapport and teach students how they are expected to treat each other, with dignity and respect.  We also value and teach character traits.

On day one I want students to be see what their year will be like.  I want them working together, talking, and getting to know each other.  Yes, I teach routines and rules, too, but I want students interacting. I want to hear laughter. I want to see smiles on faces.  I want new friendships to blossom.  I want students to accept each other.  Through play, this process begins.

I recently designed a great set of activities that can be used for the first four days of school.  They best part is they are Cootie Catchers.  Who doesn't love making and playing with the?  Best of all, they let the teacher talk about four character traits each day so by the end of the fourth day, 16 traits have been discussed as a class.  Teachers can reinforce why the traits are important to creating a positive class culture.  The first Cootie Catcher gets students paired up and allows for the game playing to be non-threatening because the questions students ask each other are non-personal.  Each of the next Cootie Catchers gradually ask more questions that are more and more designed for students to share more about themselves.  Hopefully by the end of the week students will have new friends with things in common.

Here's some examples of the questions designed to gradually allow students to become comfortable sharing.

Cootie Catcher #1 - These are a few of my favorite things : 

• What is your favorite food? 

Cootie Catcher #2 - Get to Know Me! 

• Do you celebrate holidays? If so, what’s your favorite?

Cootie Catcher #3 - More About Me! 

• What do you like to do for fun on weekends?

Cootie Catcher #4 - Wishes, Hopes and Dream

• What is one thing you wish people knew about you?

This activity is designed so students can play the game with one to four partners so that over the course of the first week, students know at least four students really well.

What are your favorite back to school ice breakers and get to know you activities?  Have a great school year!

4 Steps to Analyzing Poetry With Students

Do you like teaching poetry?  What kinds of poems do you enjoy?  If you teach fourth graders,  you'll want to use poems that will connect with students, and I've found that means humor!  If I can get students to read and write poetry, I'm doing a happy dance!

So how DO you begin teaching students how to analyze poems?  I recommend starting by reading your favorite poems aloud.  Dig out your childhood poetry books.  What poems do you remember from your childhood?  Can you recite any poems?  What were your favorite poems?  Who were your favorite authors?  If you share your love of poetry, students will see that. 

Bring poetry books from the library into your classroom and set up a big display area.  Use post-it-notes with arrows and put them on the pages of the poems you enjoy and write things like, "Great use of alliteration!"  and "The author repeats the word, 'thump' three times." etc.   This simple task shows students what's in your mind when you read the poem.  Talk about the message of the poem.  Talk about what the poem is about.  Reread the poem, listening for patterns and for the overall flow of the words.  Do any words stand out?  What words?  Why do you think the author chose the words she or he did to convey the meaning?  Read the poems more than once.  With each reading, you'll discover things not seen before.  These pieces of the puzzle help create the mood, feeling tone, and message of the poem.  Most importantly, do this process with students so they realize you can't read a poem once and "get" the meaning on the first go-round.  It takes many readings.

One of my favorite poets to read aloud with students is Shel Silverstein.  Possibly my favorite poem is, "Sick" with reasons that . . . "Little Peggy Ann McKay cannot go to school today.  She has the measles and the mumps, a rash, a gash, and purple bumps."  {You have to put on your silly acting hat and use a great voice when you read this poem!}  At this point all of the students are with me!  {Yessss! Insert another teacher happy dance!}   Next up, I read Silverstein's poem, "Sarah Cynthia Silvia Stout Would Not Take the Garbage Out."   Video of the Poem Read by Shel Silverstein.  Now students are hooked!  The walls of resistance are coming down.  All students can connect with these two themes of being sick and not wanting to take the garbage out.  {Yay!  A text to self connection.}

The fun part of analyzing poetry is figuring out what the poet was trying to say.  This is where the use of figurative language comes in.  It's what makes the poetry have that music-like rhythm and flow.  It's the flow of the words, the rhythm of the beat, the pattern of the syllables, it's the words carefully chosen to create images in the reader's mind.  THIS is the fun part of poetry.  Finding all these written treasures!

I must say that my personal experience with analyzing poetry as a high school student was not easy. Flashback to my 10th grade year; one of my most challenging years because I attended school that year in England.  My uncle, aunt, and cousins were kind enough to let me live with them to get the foreign exchange student experience of a lifetime but that year was far and away one of the hardest academically.  One of my favorite teachers taught English literature, but I had never ever analyzed poetry and his class was a university-bound level literature class.  My English classmates had lots of previous experience analyzing literature.  We analyzed two of Shakespeare's poems and it took us ALL year.  Yes, we  spent the entire year on those two poems!   I remember translating the meaning of each word in every line.  I had notes scrawled in between the lines to decipher Shakespeare's meaning.   We analyzed "King Richard II" and "Anthony and Cleopatra."  To help us learn, my teacher took our class to see Shakespeare's birthplace at Stratford Upon Avon and we watched a Shakespearian play in the theater in London.  What an experience it was.

Elementary school students today are being taught to analyze poems early on in their school career and as a result, I can tell you, today's learners will be much more prepared to tackle Shakespeare's works one day because of it.  

Another key to success is you really delving into the poem and understanding it before you attempt teach it to students.  Teaching children to analyze poetry isn't one of those things you can just pick up and teach; some poems really are hard for adults to understand, let alone ask students to understand. You really need to spend time thinking, reflecting, asking questions about what you've read, and really understand the poem yourself.

If you teach the Common Core curriculum, your fourth and fifth graders will read nine poems on the task exemplars list.   (CCSS-ELA Task Exemplars: pages 66-70)  I happen to LOVE poetry and spent two weeks reading these nine poems with a critical eye and decided to do the hard work that teachers don't have the time to do.  I set out to create 4th and 5th grade poetry analysis task cards for each of the nine poems on the exemplars list.

Here's how I would suggest learning about poems.  First, learned all about the life of the poet to get a sense of his or her background and life.  Next, search the web for online links that you can use to show students the poem.  Next, read all you can about the poet and his or her life.  Understanding the time period the poem the poem was written and the background of the poet is essential to drawing conclusions about the poem's meaning.  Then read the poem line by line, searching for words that students need to understand.  Now search for underlying meaning.  Look for metaphors, use of similes, alliteration, and other figurative language that is used to convey meaning and paint the visual picture.  Now come up with lists of questions you can ask students about the poem.  Next, list possible answers students might come up with.  Determine the mood and theme.

Next up in importance to teaching students to analyze poetry is giving them time to become poets and write their own poetry.  Teach students that poetry doesn't have to rhyme.  Let them experience the fun of writing their own poems about what interests them.

If creating your own poetry tasks isn't your thing or if you are just flat out of time (I get it!!), I have you covered!  I created a huge bundle of Poetry Analysis Task Cards that are ready to print and use!   You will get analysis task cards for each of the 9 poems on the CCSS Text Exemplar list, teacher summary, poem web links, task cards and answer keys, a recording booklet you can use for all of the responses, poet biography, how to read a poem, and more!   Poems included are: "The Echoing Green,"  "The New Colossus,"  "Casey at the Bat,"  "A Bird Came Down the Walk,"  "Fog,"  "Dust of Snow," "Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf,"  "They Were My People,"  and "Words Free As Confetti."   I've done the hard work so you don't have to!  Heres a small peek at the materials.
To see the full bundled set on TpT, click HERE.

In my TpT store you can find lots of poetry products like poetry vocabulary posters with definitions and examples, PowerPoint slideshows, an interactive notebook set of figurative language foldables, Cootie Catchers that practice figurative language, 33 poetry vocabulary terms and more. The bundled poetry project gives 5 poetry products to give you everything you need to teach a 6-week poetry unit.

My independent poetry project teaches students about different poem forms, gives the definition, and examples so students get the hang of the poetry form.  At the end of the unit, hold a "Poet Celebration" and have people review the poems students have written.  I taught and refined the unit and the set on TpT is my best selling item and is a loved favorite by students, teachers, and parents. Here's a peek at some of the poetry project pages. It comes in black and white as well as color.

Teach, love poetry!

Help Students Love Math: Use a Math Reference Lap Book "Office"

There's so much math content to be learned by students these days.  I would venture to say that most math programs need more visuals for students.  To help students learn the concepts, give them the visual tools they need and teach them to be independent learners.  We need to give students as many tools as we can so they can look up what they don't know. I've used lots of math helper charts over the years but yesterday I created the Cadillac of all reference charts and I'm so excited to share it with teachers!    You can see the Math Lapbook Reference here on TpT.

When I began created this set, I thought about all of the formats that I could use, but I tend to go for the practical.  I consider how the item will be kept in a student desk or cubby.  File folders are perfect!  They're sleek, flat, and fit into a binder if needed.  You can laminate them if you want or cover them with clear Contac paper.  You can three-hole punch the lapbook if needed to secure it in a  binder.

The file folder lapbooks are the perfect tool if your students leave the room for math instruction. Students can simply take their folder with them!  The math lapbooks are perfect for taking home for home use with homework, too.  You might consider making one for students that stays at home and one that stays at school.

This lapbook version is perfect to hold the four pages of helper charts.  Just glue the charts in any order you want onto the faces of a file folder and students can look up what they need to know.  Voila!  Everything in one spot.

Here's a peek at the pages.  Best yet, it's in my TpT store for less than the price of a small latte.  I like to equate the value of things in relation to lattes!  ;)

Enjoy everything math!

Helping Students LOVE Poetry

I love teaching poetry!  It's my favorite time of the year and one that all students experience success... even the boys who tend to have a less than positive attitude before the unit begins.

Poetry should be fun for students and it's our job as teachers to help students love the sound of written language.  We model our passion through our lessons, memories from our childhood, and our enthusiasm.  I remember my dad reciting Lewis Carroll's "The Walrus and the Carpenter" word for word...the whole thing!  I was amazed and it soon became a poem I could recite and fall in love with as well.  My students were amazed that I, too, could recite much of the poem from memory.

Here are some tips to get you started teaching poetry in your classroom!

Tip #1: Start by reading your own favorite poem to students.  It helps them see that you enjoy poetry, and that they, too, can enjoy poetry.  If you don't have a favorite, Shel Silverstein is great poet to begin with, because 4th graders love the humor and can relate to the poems.  Make sure to read the poem with great intonation and emotion.  It will really hook them.  When you've finished reading the poem,  talk about the mood, the speaker in the poem, the setting and the problem in the poem.  Then you can challenge students to find the figurative language.  Once you've done all of this, re-read the poem so your students can see the poem from a whole new perspective.

Tip #2: Introduce a new poem each day for the first week of poetry unit to get the kids hooked!  Make sure to choose poems that are different in style and by a variety of poets so that kids can find one the speaks to them the most.
Not sure which poems to read? Here is a list of some of my favorite poems:
   "Sick" by Shel Silverstein
   "Sarah Cynthia Silvia Stout" by Shel Silverstein
   "The Giving Tree" by Shel Silverstein
   "Paul Revere's Ride" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
   "The Walrus and the Carpenter" by Lewis Carroll
   "Sneezles" by A.A. Milne

and don't forget to use nursery rhyme classics to listen to the rhyme scheme and rhythm!
   "The Owl and the Pussycat" by Edward Lear
   "Wynken, Blyken, and Nod" by Eugene Field
   "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" by Jane Taylor

Tip #3: Introduce different forms of poems.  This allows you to teach about the rules of poetry.  For example: Haikus have a very specific 5, 7, 5 syllable rule that must be followed, while other poems simply use rhyming words, while others have no form at all.  Challenge students to find the rule that is followed within each poem.

Tip #4: Introduce the vocabulary of poetry.  This will really help students understand what they are reading and learning about.  Try using an interactive notebook to engage kids even more.  If you are searching for something to get you started, check out this interactive notebook of figurative language. Students also love reference posters that are posted on a word wall for easy reference.  Last but not least, let students play a game to learn the vocabulary of poetry.  Students don''t even realize how much they are learning when they see how fun Cootie Catcher Vocab is!!

Tip #5: Let students try their hand at writing poetry!  I know it sounds crazy, but you will be surprised.  Give students the reins, and let them write about whatever interests them.  I think you will be surprised at how much students take ownership of writing poems, and find their own style, even the boys!  Not sure where to start?  This 6 week poetry unit gives you all that you need to introduce poetry writing, guidelines, templates, poetry outlines, templates, and so much more!

Tip #6: Let students make their very own book of poems!  Take all of the poems they have written, and compile them into their very own poetry book.  Let students design their own book cover, or give them a template to color in.  Challenge students to write an about the author page (who knew you could sneak in a little teaching about autobiographies too).  At the end of the unit, have students share their poetry book with family and friends, and have them write comments in the students poetry book!  The feedback will encourage them that their written thoughts have power and value.  My daughter was in my 4/5 blend class and still has the poetry book she wrote. It's a real keepsake that shows her interests at the time.

Tip #7: Once students have listened to you read poetry aloud, read poetry, and tried their hand at writing poetry, they are armed with the skills necessary to dig even deeper and begin analyzing poetry.  Poetry centers work great for poetry analysis.  At each center, give students task cards to complete to guide and challenge their learning. With structure and teaching the elements of poetry, students will soon enjoy the detective work needed to understand the deeper meanings of some poems.  There are nine poems on the CCSS-ELA Exempla list for 4th and 5th graders, which is a great place to start your poetry analysis.  Remember, part of analyzing poetry is learning about the poet and his/her life and learning about the time period.  If you're not sure where to start, here is a great Task Card Bundle.

Love poetry!

Use Math Vocabuylary Interactive Notebook Flaps to Help Improve Math Skills

 I can't resist telling you about a neat interactive math window flap math vocabulary product.  It's for 4th grade and includes 280 vocabulary words all organized and color coded (of course!).  

Included are the word, the definition and space for students to draw and write an example that shows they know the word meaning.  

It's designed to be fast to cut and glue into student notebooks. Take a peek at one of the pages and see what you think.  

For more capable students, you can choose not to use the pre-printed definitions and have students write their own definitions.  

Personally, I want students to know the exact meaning.  I'm most interested in how students can show understanding of the word by writing or drawing an example.  

Click HERE to see the Flap Book in my TpT store.

Enjoy teaching the language of math!