When I introduce the reading strategy of visualization/creating mental images I use a lot of poetry! Poetry makes great mentor texts because they are short and engage the reader quickly.
My class loved the poem Colors by Shel Silverstein. While I read the poem the students illustrated their mental images.
After drawing we conducted a "museum walk". We sat in a circle with our card in front of us. One by one we went around and explained how we interpreted the poem.
It is always interesting to see the unique interpretations.
I especially liked this student's question about whether this poem was describing a person or not.
Most students used their background knowledge of human characteristics to infer the poem was describing a person...obviously an imaginary one! This card spurred a great discussion as did the last line of the poem!
How do you use Poetry in your classroom?
Happy National Poetry Month!
6 comments:
Thanks for the follow! I have so many blogging questions.
I have done an imagery/interpretation activity like this with my kids, but am totally stealing your idea of posting the poem and their pictures around. Consider yourself a teaching idea theivery victim! Yeah, I just made that up (as you can tell).
Language Lovin' Teacher
Very nice! We definitely need to swap poetry ideas because it's one of the topics I start the year with.
I love this idea of having students draw while they visualize a poem. The most important part I think is the sharing piece when everyone can see how poetry can mean many different things to many different people. Sometimes the kiddos think there's a right or wrong answer.
I try to explore different poems throughout the year but especially during National Poetry Month. We have been exploring poems that make us smile from authors like Jack Prelutsky, Ken Nesbitt and Shel Silverstein. We will be finishing up with some more traditional poets.
Thanks for sharing this great idea.
Great ideas! Thanks for sharing.
Teresa (your newest fan)
Confessions of a Teaching Junkie
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Andrea, love your ideas! Can't wait to go through your blog and read more! Thank you for sharing and finding my blog! (new follower too!)
Andrea
Cheers To School
Love this idea!
Lou
Pencils with Pizzazz
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