Poetry & Song

Two of my favorite ideas that we are doing this year in first grade are to incorporate Poetry and Songs into our classrooms. We got the idea from Debbie Miller's book Reading with Meaning, and many of our resources come from both of Maria Walther's books- Reading Instruction for the Differentiated Classroom and Month-By-Month Trait-Based Writing Instruction.

I was disappointed to discover last year that my students did not know the Mother Goose poems. These were little poems that I grew up knowing such as "Old Mother Hubbard", "Little Bo Peep", "Humpty-Dumpty" and other classics. So this summer, my co-teacher and I planned to bring this in to first grade.

The greatest asset about using poetry in my classroom culture is that the children memorize so many poems, and then when they look inside their specially made poetry binders, they can practice saying and reading them while pointing to the words. It's a great way to indirectly get them to learn new vocabulary and thus improve their reading.

I love finding poems that relate with the current units we've been studying.

The songs that we are learning have been numerous and fun. We've learned songs like "Frere Jacques", "Baa Baa Black Sheep", "Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho", "Kookaburra", and so many more. These are fantastic to use during transition times. I start the song, and the students join in singing. By the time we're done with the song, they need to be ready to learn. I have copies of the songs in bins at each of the tables, and students are allowed to practice reading these as well. Why is this valuable? *Ding *Ding *Ding. This is another valuable source of indirect vocabulary instruction!