Reading, Writing, and Celebrating Poetry

For almost 30 years, National Poetry Month has been honored in April. It might be my favorite annual celebration. We immerse ourselves in Shel Silverstein, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, Judith Viorst, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Nikki Giovanni, to name just a few.

Here are a few reasons why I love it so much:

• Poetry is a tremendous vehicle for building fluency and expression. While most of my students don’t voluntarily read a book over and over, they almost all enjoy reading a poem over and over. They play with volume, inflection, and their rate of speaking to make meaning jump off the page.
• Poetry develops vocabulary and grammar. Submerged in the beautiful economy of words, students’ ears are attuned to language that enriches hearts and minds.
• Poetry builds memory. Our students are growing up in a world of unprecedented distraction. It is lovely when they find a poem worth reciting and commit to the repetition required to remember it.
• No matter what grade I teach, I am moved and inspired as even the most reluctant writers embrace the freedom from ordinary conventions to put big emotions and bigger thoughts on the page.
• One thing that my students notice early on is how poets look at ordinary things in a new way. This spurs them to do the same. For example, I had an ugly green area rug in my gathering space for years, and I saw it with brand-new eyes when Krystal Nguyen penned this poem in first grade (it has been framed on my wall ever since).

The Flowers

The green rug
is like green
grass that
has flowers
on it
because
the
children
sitting there
are the
flowers.

Beautiful, right?

If you missed Allison’s article last week, check it out now to discover the wonderful poetry resources we have to enrich your poetry month.