It is the second week of National Poetry Month, and I wanted to share more poetry with each grade level. The checkouts have been very high in the section, and I have to replenish the supply almost once a day so I know poetry is being read in our building!
With kindergarten, my first lesson involved having them illustrate a poem I read aloud. The poem was "Recess" by Avis Harley from The Poetry Friday Anthology TEKS K-5 Version: Poems for the School Year with Connections to the TEKS by Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong.
For the next lesson, I knew I wanted them to get a glimpse of more of the beauty of poetry, so I chose Daniel Finds a Poem by Micha Archer as my read-aloud.
What I appreciated about this book was that it truly helps in understanding poetry in a way that is like a story.
In the book, the main character Daniel learns about a poetry event in the park he frequents. But he doesn't quite understand what poetry is. So he asks his animal friends in the park, and they each give him a reply -- suited to their world, and rhythmic and lovely!
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Archer, Micha. Daniel Finds a Poem. New York: Nancy Paulsen, 2016. Print.
Part of the book is a repetition of the days of the week, as Daniel chats with a different animal each day. I had students repeat the days with me, and I asked them to tell me what day came next and before.
With each animal's reply to the question "What is poetry?" I picked out a particularly perfect phrase from each one and had them repeat it. If you do this lesson, you won't have any difficulty picking them out.
Along the way, the illustrations are stunning and will bring you to nice stopping points. Leaves, water, trees, rocks--- all of them vividly done in perfect collages. In a double page spread, Daniel runs alongside a squirrel, his legs extended across the gutter creating an authentic sense of movement. Archer also employs a masterful use of scale evident in a page in which Daniel towers over a cricket, deep in thought and conversation.
At the end, Daniel writes a poem collected with all of the phrases the animals shared with him. When I read this aloud to learners they applauded afterward, almost as if they were listening to him share the poetry in real life! (This was a particularly beautiful moment in the read-aloud.) After, we went through each line and looked back at which animal contributed to Daniel's poem.
The beauty of this picture book? It shows us that poetry is indeed all around us, ready to be discovered.
I am happy with what we accomplished: each kindergartener listened to rich, melodic lines of poetry, adapted for their curiosity of the natural world. I hope they will think of this book the next time they are out with their families exploring the outdoors. I have hopes that they might also write some lines about what the creatures and living things they will encounter-- and bring these verses to me to enjoy!
How do you introduce poetry to kindergarten?
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