Objectives
In framing my objectives, I was reminded of a quote by Sylvia Ashton Warner, "I see the mind of a five-year-old as a volcano with two vents: destructiveness and creativeness. And I see to the extent we widen the creative channel, we atrophy the destructive one."6
In the purest sense, this unit is meant to give students another genre to develop that creative channel. The unit's lessons and activities will maintain adherence to, and foster growth of, necessary literacy skills. The three major elements of the unit: sound, rhyme, and nonsense will be a constant, either separately or together, underpinning the lessons. I believe that reading and recitation of poems also provides a most appropriate vehicle for explorations in oral language development.
As I have considered the nature of the first grade child, it has become evident to me, that a subject as big, broad, and beautiful as poetry cannot be relegated to a "clump" of learning to be done all at once — attacked briskly and forgotten quickly. The poems selected for the lessons and in the bibliography for the unit will support, as well as provide models of the components, of literacy skills being learned. The sequence of lessons and activities in the unit evolve as a first grade child does, over the course of a year.
The unit will blanket the entire school year with couplets of lessons on poetry. In this context, a couplet refers to a pair of lessons rather than verse. These couplets will be interspersed every two weeks or twice a month, depending on how your calendar falls. For my schedule, Thursdays and Fridays will be optimum days for presenting these lessons as attendance tends to wane at the end of the week. I am hoping these lessons will serve to provide extra motivation to be in school on Poetry Days. The couplets will gain in both content and complexity in conjunction with the emergence and gradual growth of the first graders' literacy skills. The lessons will be entwined within the scope and sequence of the language arts curriculum. Each couplet of lessons will seamlessly merge, not only with the district's pacing chart, but with the pace of the children's ever changing abilities.
I want my students to understand that there is something other than just story books or "readers" available to them for reading, listening to, and appreciating. Another goal is for the students to understand that poetry is not always conventional in its use of grammar, spelling, and structure. They need to know that poems are a form of art and because of that; they are not bound by the usual rules. I will achieve this goal by illustrating the way that nursery rhymes and poems play with words - this includes playing with sound, creating nonsense words, and inventing spelling. I want my students to know that there are many types of oral language experiences, including choral speaking, recitation, individual sharing, and finding the rhythm and patterns in poems. I will encourage my students' creative endeavors by modeling writing with think-alouds and write-alouds, then supporting and guiding their individual forays into writing poems. My students will learn that writing is not the only means available to them for capturing the poetry they create. We will use manipulatives (small, hands-on objects such as blocks, seashells, uncooked macaroni, beads, etc.), photography, recording, both video and audio tape. My students will understand that poetry can be very private or it may be shared, by choice, with others. Most of all, I want my students to understand that listening to the sounds of words and turning those words into poetry, can be fun.
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