First Grade Poetry

I would like to share the poetry unit that a my teaching colleague and I designed for a first grade class.  Our goals were that it would be accessible, engaging, and provide a spark of interest and motivation in order to dig deeper into poetry.  We included bubbles and a recording of the sounds of their recess and modeled strategies that we thought they could mimic and build on. Here are some snapshots from our week as well as the full unit.

We used lesson plans that utilize the gradual release of responsibility model.  Our lessons included mentor poems, teacher modeling, and shared independent writing.  I believe this style of teaching and lesson plan format to be effective and easy to use.

 

This anthology of poetic hip hop honors this music genre’s contribution to poetry.	This is an easy to use teaching resource that simply outlines how to use peer poets as mentors.
We modeled how to create line breaks:	We modeled how to revise a shared poem to add sound words and line breaks.

At the start of the week, students wrote pieces that read like narratives and informational pieces.  As the week progressed, many of our students’ writing evolved to include unique forms, rhythm, rhyme, and repetition.  They were motivated, engaged and I was delighted at how proud they were at the end of the week. A much needed boost of confidence.

	The cat in the hat Cat in the hat is a crazy guy. He has 1,000,000 helpers. He is a cat he has 100 friends and he is very smart. -T *reads like a narrative
		Rainbow rain is very colorful and it is pretty. It looks like rainbows falling from the sky. -T

You can see a real progression of poetic language in these:

Day 1: Arguing Arguing little sister such a brat

Day 4: abcdefg such lovely spelling you help me learn on and on year after year

A sample of our final student poetry anthology:

See entire unit with lesson, resources and more here.