joy of poetry, The

Teaching Pre K-8, Mar 2002 by Sullivan, Jane

Reading poetry encourages students to learn the craft of writing.

Guest columnist Dr. Jane Sullivan is professor emeritus of Rowan University, where she taught for 26 years. She is also a volunteer fifth grade writing teacher.

In her book, For the Good of the Earth and Sun (Heinemann, 1989), Georgia Heard reminds us that reading poetry is making joy. "Reading or hearing a poem," she writes, "should feel like jumping into a cool lake in the summer or drinking a cold glass of water when you're thirsty."

Sherri Brecker wanted her second graders to experience the joy of that cool glass of water when she began her unit on studying the craft of writing. She chose Valerie Worth's poem, "Raw Carrots" as the centerpiece for the inquiry. She first wanted the children to feel the poem inside them - the drum beat of its rhythm, the music of its words, the joy of its imagery. Then she wanted them to return to the poem, this time to study the crafting techniques Worth had used.

Carrots to metal

Using Worth's "Raw Carrots," Sherri invited the children to read along with her as she read the poem aloud. In the poem, Worth compares the carrots to metal and talks about how much horses like carrots as much as the poet, in fact. She uses precise words and imagery in the poem that allow readers to picture horses and people enjoying the fresh taste of a raw carrot The children read the poem over and over, first together, then alternating - a line at a time in groups of three or four.

Interpretations

Next, Sherri called on volunteers to act out the poem, pantomiming what they thought of as the meaning of each verse. Miming action that she saw in the first verse, Rachel pretended to bite down on something as hard as metal; Danny was a horse, crunching on carrots for the second verse. The action continued until all volunteers had acted out their own interpretations.

Satisfied that they had an understanding of the poem, Sherri moved to the next phase of her lesson. Folding construction paper into fourths, they copied the verses of the poem, one on each square, then drew a picture in the square about that verse. With highlighter pens, they marked the words or phrases that they really liked. To illustrate how the horses enjoyed the carrots, Danny drew drips coming from his horse's mouth. Next to the mouth he wrote the words, crunch, crunch, crunch. "That's to show that the juice comes from crunching on fresh carrots," he explained. Others had equally vivid translations for their pictures. Kaybienne blended gray over her orange carrot to show the comparison between the raw carrot and metal. Another student drew large teeth in the horse's mouth because, "it takes a lot to bite into carrots as hard as metal."

Studying a writer's craft

It was clear that these second graders experienced the joy of this poem. They were ready to return to it now, and study Valerie Worth's crafting techniques. Sherri then used a modified form of Katie Wood Ray's steps, taken from her book, Wondrous Words (NCTE, 1999), for studying a writer's craft. She asked her students to:

1. Read aloud the lines they had highlighted.

2. Tell what Valerie Worth did.

3. Name that "thing."

Volunteers read aloud the phrases they had chosen Sherri recorded them on a transparency with the following headings:

Words

Why Is She Using These Words?

Name It

She explained later she would transfer their "noticings" to a wall chart. Ashley said that in the poem, Worth "explained that carrots were like metal" and named this technique, comparing. Tom said that Worth used words that told us the horse "made a lot of noise." He called that technique using noise words. Taryn pointed out that Worth could have used ordinary phrases like "the horses liked carrots" but chose better words. He called this technique taking away old words.

Crafting ideas After the wall chart had been prominently displayed, Sherri encouraged the students to find such techniques in their reading. Over the next few days, the children read with their notebooks at their side, recording examples of the techniques when they came across them in other poems. They gathered with notebooks in their laps, to listen as Sherri read aloud. Even then, they listened for comparisons, or words that were out of the ordinary (taking away old words) or onomatopoeia (noise words). These too, they recorded in their notebooks.

Sherri also encouraged students to try out these techniques in their own writing. Little by little, students began to try out one or two of the crafting ideas they had discovered in Worth's writing. Nick decided to use noise words when he wrote about playing hockey:

Hockey player going left to right

Dodging people out.

Swish

Swish

Swish

Go my skates as I am

About to score.

I shoot...and I make it

The crowd goes wild.

The buzzer goes

Ding

Ding

Ding

The game is over

We win.

Chardnee did some comparing when she wrote about snow:

The snow is like

A tiny puffy cloud

Coming out of the sky.

The snow is so soft and light

Like wind over the mountains.

The snow is white crystals