Small Reads for Brighters Days
Hello! I’ve finally created an online roundup and a pdf printable roundup of my Poetry Tips for Teachers posts from National Poetry Month. Enjoy! Online compilation of Laura’s Poetry Tips for Teachers (Reading Poetry Aloud in the Classroom) PDF version of Laura’s Poetry Tips for Teachers (Reading Poetry Aloud in the Classroom) You can also […]
Welcome to today’s tip in my month-long (even if it was last month) Poetry Tips for Teachers series. This is the last tip, and I thank you guys so much for stopping by to read throughout April and today! Later this month, once I recover from my Poetry Month road trips and events, I plan […]
Welcome to today’s tip in my month-long Poetry Tips for Teachers series. Tip #22: Fess up. If you don’t feel comfortable with poetry (whether it’s the poetry itself or just the dramatic presentation of it), it’s okay to let students know that. In fact, they are often thoroughly relieved to discover that you aren’t the […]
Welcome to today’s tip in my month-long Poetry Tips for Teachers series. Tip #21: Focus on sounds. If a poem features repeated sounds in it, emphasize those sounds as you read it so that kids will pick up on the repetition. In the poem below, for example, which I wrote for Ed DeCaria’s March Madness […]
Welcome to today’s tip in my month-long Poetry Tips for Teachers series. Tip #20: Mix it up! I hear people advise teachers, “Just share poems you love!” I kind of disagree with that. I mean, of course, share the poems you love. But perhaps your poetry taste is very narrow. If you only share silly […]
First of all, writer friends, I have a guest post up at Angie Karcher’s RhyPiBoMo series. I shared an excerpt from the book Lisa Bullard and I wrote together, Rhyming Picture Books: The Write Way. Take a peek if you’re interested! And teacher friends, welcome to today’s tip in my month-long Poetry Tips for Teachers […]
Happy Poetry Friday! Welcome to today’s tip in my month-long Poetry Tips for Teachers series. Tip #18: Let the poet read. If you’re self-conscious about reading poetry aloud, one way to ease into it is let the poets themselves read! I love the Poetry Speaks to Children anthology that comes with a CD of many […]
Welcome to today’s tip in my month-long Poetry Tips for Teachers series. Tip #17: Give a line some space. One approach to reading poems aloud is to do a slight pause at the end of each line, whether there is punctuation there or not. That’s the identifying factor of poetry, after all. Poets break their […]
Welcome to today’s tip in my month-long Poetry Tips for Teachers series. Tip #16: Add sound effects. Have kids make sound effects appropriate to the poem. Kids love being sound effects experts, and it give pre-readers, especially, a great way to be part of a poem reading when they don’t actually know the poem yet. […]
Welcome to today’s tip in my month-long Poetry Tips for Teachers series. Tip #15: Echo read. Try echo reading. You read a line, and then the students echo it back to you. This is great for helping students’ fluency, and I’m always amazed at how quickly and how well they pick up on performance nuances. […]
