Poetry
Children’s poetry tends to evoke a response of delight and fun in our class as students naturally enjoy the aesthetics of sound and rhythm. Most are aware of nursery rhymes and songs with simplicity of words and cadence. Students can already identify and make connections by hearing the oral elements of poetry, but not in depth with the written text as a reader. I am excited to combine the cognition and aesthetic reading, so the students can comprehend the vocabulary as they recognize sound and rhythm. Laying this foundation with poetry allows students to then think about Rosenblatt’s questions for deeper understanding, “What caught the interest most? What pleased, frightened, surprised? What troubled? What seemed wrong? What things in the child’s own life paralleled those in the poem or story?”18 I look forward to reading from Fairyland of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which includes such poems as “I’d Love to Be a Fairy’s Child” by Robert Graves, “The Flowers” by Robert Louis Stevenson, and “Fairies” by Langston Hughes.
Sedgwick reminds us that we need to expose children to a wide variety of poems. He goes on to say that this is a way to combat racism, and I agree as it is an inviting way to observe cultures of others or our own. As mentioned previously, Cool Salsa by Lori Carlson, is a collection from Mexican American poets that conjure up colorful images and even memories of fiestas and family gatherings with which students can culturally connect. The children’s book, Emma’s Poem by Linda Glaser et. al, directs students to our national motto of "Give me your tired, your poor Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free . . . " as they learn about the poet Emma Lazarus and her interest in the journey of immigrants. Working with poems, students practice writing skills, reading and writing for pleasure, and learning the content and importance of this literary genre. For example, multicultural poetry in our reading curriculum, California Treasures anthology, not only helps students connect with other cultures, but also helps to realize that “poetry isn’t merely current, but about the past and the future, and about lives lived now and then in all sorts of different cultures.”19 Students will expand their vocabulary with terminology such as “line”, “stanza”, “rhythm”, “meter”, but most importantly they will expand their cultural awareness. Through poetry, students will not only recognize gender roles, multicultural role models, and heroes, they will learn to write their own creative stories and dreams in this medium of literature.
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