Elementary School Poetry 180 - Week One

It was way too crazy a week ago for me to post the poems I was going to read. Instead, on Mondays I will be posting the poems I read the previous week to my students. In fact, I didn't get to reading any poems aloud until the fourth day, when I read four in a row.

• I started with "Introduction to Poetry" by Billy Collins.
• "The Tyger" by William Blake.
• "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll.
• "This Is Just to Say" by William Carlos Williams.
• "Lines" by Martha Collins

In the spirit of "Introduction to Poetry", we just "walk inside the poem's room". Students are welcome to comment, if they like, but I ask no questions of them. There is no analysis. That may come later - and as a separate activity. I am going to try poems with VTS, Visual Thinking Strategies, this year. I think "The Tyger" might be an interesting one to try later in the year.

"Jabberwocky" was a poem some students had heard or read before. All the others were new to them. We did comment on the made up words in the Lewis Carroll poem. And a student did mention how "This Is Just to Say" was a poem of apology.