How Writers Grow by Cynthia Carbone Ward

Chapter 2 ‘The Light in the Language: Looking at Poetry’

Poetry is such an important part of language arts—or it should be. I can’t believe some teachers stay away from it. This is truly a way for kids to share their feelings without all of the restrictions placed on them by the formal essay. These longer writing tasks can be intimidating to some students.

Ward shares a number of reasons for teachers to include poetry as a part of their writing curriculum:
1. Poetry is a way for kids to voice their feelings and fantasies
2. Poetry gives students a chance to experience the sheer pleasure of language
3. Poetry presents opportunities to unleash the imagination , unfettered by mechanics
4. Poetry helps kids to become better writers

Ward shares a number of ides for embedding poetry into the curriculum:
1. Gather an assortment of poems to read to our class. (Don’t worry that you don’t have poems. Ward gives us some great resources on
pages 28-30.)
2. Talk about the poems-but don’t overdo it. Look at song lyrics. (Let the kids bring in lyrics to their favorite songs, school appropriate, of course. It gives you a chance to keep up with popular music, and the kids thing you’re really cool.)
3. Catch poetry with imaginary nets, close your eyes as you listen to a poem and then sweep the nets through phrases, images, and feelings that linger in the air. (I can’t wait to try this with my 6th graders. They can jot down the phrases that stay in their minds and cross out words until they get to the main idea of the poem.)

Ward gives her readers some activities to share with students that, I think, are pretty good. I put together a poetry unit a number of years ago that included a lot of different formats for poetry writing. Over the years I have added and deleted some of the formats and finally put the unit away. I think I’ll pull it out of moth balls and try it again with a few additions from Ward:
1. List Poems page 36
2. Really Knowing page 40
3. Snapshot Writing page 43
4. Time Travel page 43 (I’m particularly anxious to try this one because it will tie in nicely into social studies.)