I bet you thought this Friday was just a shopping day. Wrong! It’s Flossing Day (no, not the dance). So grab your dental floss and review good techniques…and celebrate with this poem from In the Middle of the Night. Bet you didn’t know dental floss had so much fun without
September 8 is International Literacy Day! This year’s theme is Teaching and Learning in the Covid-19 Crisis and Beyond. It’s a great time to thank all the teachers you know for the extra work they’re doing to reach and teach your kids during challenging times. Thanks, teachers! Here are just
Happy Poetry Friday! (Wondering what Poetry Friday is? Click here.) I hope you had an awesome Poetry Month. I did. It was super busy with lots of visits to schools and libraries. However, I’m way behind on blog reading, and I especially am a bit sad that I missed out
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
Welcome to today’s tip in my month-long Poetry Tips for Teachers series. Tip #11: Focus on transition words. In narrative poems that tell a story, emphasize transition words, like “then,” or “first,” or “next” to help kids follow the chronology and make sense of the series of events. Or if
Welcome to today’s tip in my month-long Poetry Tips for Teachers series. [Addendum: I had a little issue with a disappearing blog post and rewriting it and–well, I’ll spare you the details. I apologize for having the same basic tip two days in a row, but this one has a
Tip #5: Make a face. Keep an appropriate expression. Don’t grin during a sad poem or look serious during silly verse. If you were to smile while reading this poem, for instance, your students might be a little disturbed–or think you are!
Tip #4: Slow down. Read slowly. Much more slowly than you would read prose. Poems are dense and compact and a lot to take in! Here I am reading the poem–as slowly as I can:>) [soundcloud url=“https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/198628798” params=“color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=“100%” height=“166” iframe=“true” /]
Tip #1: Twice Is Nice When you introduce a poem, read it twice. Poems are dense with language and images, and they often hold way too much info to absorb in a single hearing. Generally, read the poem through one time without any direction to your students. THEN, if you
Happy Poetry Friday! Usually, when I recommend poetry books–whether it’s to educators, kids, or aspiring poets–I recommend focusing on very current books. But Barbara Juster Esbensen is one of my favorites, and her poems always feel like they could have been written just this morning. In honor of the northeastern
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