Poetry Activities to Use in Your Elementary Classroom

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Hey, teachers. If you have a classroom and a commute, you're in the right place. I'm your host. Rachel and I want to ride along with you each week on your ride into school. This podcast is the place for busy teachers toe want actionable tips, simple strategies and just want to enjoy their job more. Let's go. Well, hello. Welcome to the class. Um, commute. Podcast. I'm your host, Rachel, And I hope you're having a wonderful day. Thanks for joining me and spending a little time with me today. I want to begin our time together with another quick shout out from a listener who left a review on the podcast. Rachel H. Says I love how relatable Rachel is in these weekly podcasts. She's not afraid to be herself and shares both her successes and failures. Teachers need to hear the other educators struggle on a speed back, and open communication is a must for classroom teachers. I always leave this podcast with a smile. Thanks for a teacher inspired podcast. So much fun. Well, thank you, Rachel, for that. I'm so glad that I leave you with a smile every day. That is absolutely what I am trying to do to give encouragement while also still sharing the real struggle that teacher's face. So I am here for it all the good, the bad, the ugly. And hopefully we have a little fun along the way as well. If you would also love to leave review, I would love if you did that, and you can do so by going to the review rating section in your podcast. Apurate on your phone. Just swipe up a little bit. You'll see it there, and you can leave a rating in a review. And I would appreciate that so much our rights. Today we are diving into poetry. It is April at the time that this podcast goes live, and some of you may be trying to find some activities to incorporate into your classroom for National Poetry Month. And even if you are hearing this podcast later on in the year and it's not April, you should do poetry any time that feels right for you in your classroom. You do not have to wait till April to do poetry. It's great year round, so I'm gonna give you some tips on activities that you can use in your classroom during any time that you are teaching poetry, and I've got a lot of freebies as well that I will link to in the show notes. Did I just say show notes, defense show notes Who got to get my mouth working today? I've got some activities that I will link to you in the show notes, and a lot of them are free and you can find them in our members Resource library. If you do not already have access to that you conjoined for free, completely free. It's a curated collection of eight. Hon. Teacher and student resource is along with some video tutorials as well, so make sure you get the information for how to join. By heading over to the website classroom nook dot com, you will see it up the top. There is a link for the Members Resource Library, and it will get you hooked up where you need to be so you can get that password to get right into the resource library. All right, let's dive right in. I love teaching poetry, and for the most part, my students always loved our poetry unit. And although I'm sharing this episode with you in April. National Poetry Month. Like I said, I want to encourage you to teach poetry all year long. It's a genre that students can relate to, no matter what time of year you're using it. You don't have to wait until spring toe bust out your poetry books. In fact, you shouldn't. Poetry is the perfect genre for teaching, reading, writing, speaking skills and strategies in a short period of time. Since poems are usually sure incorporating them into your lessons lends itself to a quick, bite sized lesson on skills like fluency or literature, analysis, or even a quick lesson on reading comprehension strategies, there are so many things that you can do with poems. So let me share with you some of my favorites. The first way is to do poetry voices. We know that students need practice with fluency all the time, but having them recite the same lines of text over and over loses its flair and its meaning a little bit. So why not try poetry voices? So here's what you d'oh, you prepare a set of cards. You can make these ahead of time on your computer, or you could even use index cards and write them out. But essentially you're going to write on each card phrases like read with a high voice, read with a happy voice, read within an upset voice with a funny voice, a whisper voice, different voices that they're going to use to read. You get the idea, and then when a student does this activity, they're going to pick any poem from any poetry book, and they're going to pick a voice card. And then they're going to read their poem with that voice card, and then they can pick another voice card and read the same poem. But now they're reading it a little differently, and then they could do it 1/3 or fourth or however many times you want them to. D'oh! And it's fun because the kids can be reading a very serious poem, but in a silly voice. But they're getting that fluency practice, and then this lends itself to a great discussion on choosing the right voice that conveys the mood of the poem. So there's a couple different benefits here. They're getting the fluency practice by reading the same poem over and over with different poetry voices, But then they're gonna think about what voice makes the most sense for that poem. So you've got a lot of great things happening there. So poetry voices are a great activity, something that takes very little prep, and you can use it with any poem. Another activity that I love to do is small group discussions spinners, so poetry makes for great discussion Whenever I need a quick center. During my readers workshop, I gather a bunch of poetry books, and I include a poetry discussion spinner, and I will share a picture of what this looks like in the show notes at classroom nook dot com. Forward slash podcasts for its slash 13 so you can see what it looks like, but you can easily create and customize the spinner to meet the needs of your students. Once the students are at the center, they have their poetry books, and they have this spinner. The students are going to read the poems together, and then they're going to spin the discussion spinner to land on a discussion prompt to guide their conversation. So, for example, a section on your discussion spinner might say if the poem were a color. What color would it be? Another section that they might land on would say, What do you think is the reason that the author wrote this poem, or what is the mood of the poem or one of my favorite ones? Is If this poem could be an instrument, what instrument would it be? So there's a variety of fun discussion promise that you can put on this spinner that will help guide students discussion about different poems. And it's great for a speaking skills. They're working together and collaborating and engaging each other in discussion. So a poetry discussion spinner for your next reading center is a great activity for poetry. Now, if you've been with me for a while and you were with me back when I had a block called the Classroom game nook, you know how much I love games. That block is no longer active, but I still love to incorporate games whenever I can. So I have two games and guess what? They're completely free for you over on the website in our Members Resource Library, but I have one for poetry elements, and I have one for helping students identify the difference between similes and metaphors. So the 1st 1 is called pockets of poetry, and what students do is they read a card that illustrates a poetry element. So, for example, on one of the cards it says Bush and students have to identify that that isn't on Amano pia. Or they might read a car that has the sentence. I'm so hungry I could eat a horse and they would have to identify that. That is a hyperbole. And then once they've made the decision about what poetry element it is, they slipped them into these pockets in a file folder game that I've created. And again, pictures are gonna be a whole lot easier for you to understand how this game works. So I will be sure to include some pictures of what this game looks like over on the show Notes at classroom nook dot com, forward slash podcast forward slash 13 and while you're over there, you can grab it for free in our Members Resource Library. The second game help students to identify the differences between similes and metaphors, and again, this is a file full their game, where you can easily print out the game board and glue it to the inside of a file folder and then on the game cards again, our sentences that either have a simile or metaphor on it. And when a student guesses correctly, they move their moving piece on the game board to a spot that either says simile, metaphor or neither, depending on what the card is, and they use that to kind of work their way around the board again, I'll have pictures as well as a link to the freebie inside our members resource library that you can grab. And you've already got yourself to reading centers that you can use during your poetry unit. All right, moving on. I am a big proponent for finding ways where you can link reading and writing into your content areas you're reading and you're writing lessons. Shouldn't get all the fun. Who says poems can't be used in science and social ease or even math? For example, use a nonfiction poem about animals or space or plants, or you get the idea to introduce a new topic or unit to your students, Douglas Florian and I'll link to some of his work in the show. Notes is a great Children's poet for science poems, and he has books like Comets, Stars, The Moon and Mars and Beast fees that are all great for weaving poetry into your science content. And, of course, you can teach the American Revolution without reading an excerpt of Paul Revere's ride. You know, the one by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Or there's Langston Hughes with some great poetry on social issues. A simple search on Google will get you just what you need. And while we're on the topic of content areas, I love using poetry for response activities within the content areas. You can have your students write a poem in response to what they're learning in their lesson. For example, when my students were learning about the American Revolution at the beginning of the unit, one of my lessons included them writing in across that poem using the word liberty. It was just a simple activity, and it turned out really, really well. Students could also write bio poems for famous people that they're learning about haiku poems when you're learning about bio mes or animals or other topics, and so on another thing that I'm a big fan of is trying to provide multiple ways for students to practice the same skill. So you have them working in small groups using the poetry discussion spinner. They play games in their different centers. They write poems about things that they're learning in the content areas. And providing digital resource is is just one more way for students to practice poetry and have a couple of resource is that I'm going to link to in the show notes that are easy to use and fund for your students. One online activity is where students create digital magnetic poetry. You know how you can get those little magnets that have words on them, and you put him on your refrigerator and you can create different freezes or sentences. Will they have a digital version of that online called Kids Magnetic Poetry Kit? And they also have one with nature words as well, and it's completely free to use. And students drag and drop different words to create poems using the digital word tiles on this website, super easy Superfund and an easy activity to include in a poetry center. And then there's always my favorite and I am a little bias. But I love my poetry. Lincoln think that students can use individually. You could do it as a whole class or even in partners and basically what it is. It's an interactive digital guide where students explore different kinds of poetry. They read a whole bunch of poetry. They even write it. There are some links to fund games and websites that they can click to online, and there's even an activity where they try to find different elements of poetry in different books that they're reading. And it comes with a cute little flip book that they complete while they're going through the Lincoln thing. It's all done for you Superfund. I've gotten great reviews from teachers who have used it in their classrooms and have had great success with it. So I will link to that in the show notes. If you want to check that out, so there you have it, some activities that you can use easy and simple ones that you can incorporate right away. Let's do a quick rundown to review what we've already talked about. The first activity is poetry voices, where students will read the same poem using different voice cards and then choosing which one makes the most sense for their poem. There's the small group discussion spinner that you can put at a literacy centre along with a stack of poetry books to help guide their discussion. You've got some free games that you can download over at the website at classroom nook dot com. Forward slash podcast forward slash 13. These games are for practicing poetry elements and identifying them, as well as a game for identifying the difference between similes and metaphors. We talked about how you can use poems in the content areas by having them read a poem about something you're teaching in science or social studies, or even writing their own poem to reflect what they've learned. And we talked about some digital resource Is that make it really easy for students to practice poetry in a variety of ways, like the online digital magnetic poetry or the poetry? Lincoln think resource as well, and both of them will be linked in the show notes so you can easily access them. If that sounds interesting to you. Ah, link everything that we talked about today in the show notes at classroom nook dot com. Forward slash podcast forward slash 13. All right. I hope you're feeling inspired for teaching poetry to your students. Even if you don't love it, you can make your students love it. Hopefully with some of the activities and resource is that we talked about today. Thanks so much for joining me. I hope you have a great rest of your day and I will see you again. Same time, Same place next week. Bye for now.