By Reading Seed Coach Betty Ord
“What Is Orange?”
Orange is a tiger lily,
A carrot,
A feather from
A parrot,
A flame,
The wildest color
You can name.
(from Hailstones and Halibut Bones by Mary O’Neill)
I encourage all of my fellow Reading Seed Coaches to join me in celebrating National Poetry Month with our students during the month of April. As a life-long lover of poetry and a Reading Seed coach since 2009, I try to include poetry in our sessions at least monthly. During April, we’ll be enjoying poetry every week.
Our Reading Seed Lending Library has many books that feature poetry or rhyming. I typed “Poetry” into the subject line of the online database and generated a list of 22 pages of possibilities. The library even has multiple copies of some of the books. Among them I recommend: In Daddy’s Arms I Am Tall by Javaka Steptoe, Confetti and Listen to the Desert by Pat Mora, Dan Goes Home by Joy Cowley and The Other Way to Listen by Byrd Baylor.
The Lending Library also has multiple copies of the You Read to Me, I’ll Read to You books written by Mary Ann Hoberman. They are guaranteed to make you and your student laugh!
I’ve started a personal collection of children’s poetry books by finding bargain books at the Friends of the Pima County Public Library sales. Both Shel Silverstein and Jack Prelutsky have written wonderful volumes of poetry that I’ve been able to purchase for $2.00 or less. I go through the volumes, pick out a poem appropriate for each child and mark it with a colorful sticky note inscribed with the child’s name. Then I have each child find “his/her” poem and we read it together. Almost everyone likes to also find the poems I chose for their fellow readers.
Another poetry activity we enjoy is a “Poem In Your Pocket.” It can be a short poem you find or one you help the student write. This year, National Poem in Your Pocket Day is on Thursday, April 18, 2013! Here is the poem every child who reads with me took home in a pocket in March:
“March”By William Robertson
The wind is pouting at my window.
Come out it says and wear a hat.
http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/406
Looking for more poetry fun? Click here for a full list of great poetry book reviews from Reading Seed staff.
