I'm a lucky teacher that has a chance to teach in a variety of settings, but I spend most of my day co-teaching fourth and fifth grade. Our classes include general education, special education, and gifted and talented students. My colleagues and I strive to reach our students in innovative and engaging ways. We rarely use textbooks or commercial products, instead relying on creation-based and inquiry-based learning lessons. We find a great deal of our instruction relies on our students connecting with their inner talents to create innovative representations of what we're learning. We've found that our students are learning so much more through this style of teaching and we are eager to incorporate more lessons that involve art, technology, STEM and STEAM concepts, collaboration, higher order thinking skills, and allowing students to stretch their learning through differentiated activities.
My Project
Poetry is an under-appreciated art form in elementary schools. Sure, we all own a copy of Where the Sidewalk Ends (which is a great book) and a few others, but we never truly delve deep into poetry units. We use poetry to teach the basic standards, we use it to teach figurative language, and we use it to teach rhyme scheme, but that's where our use of poetry typically ends. I'd like to do something a little different.
With this project, I'd like to do an intensive study of poetry as literature; as a different style of story-telling.
The poetry books and anthologies I've chosen represent different styles of poetry. There are books like Wet Cement, on cement poetry and how words can form a picture. There are also a couple of books of haiku, one geared towards boys. I've also chosen books on limericks, reverse poetry, and poetry meant to be read with two voices. While I've chosen a few anthologies of poetry by famous poets like Emily Dickinson, I've also selected new poets with voices that my students might find themselves reflected in. I made a conscious effort to choose a wide range of diverse poetry. I tried to choose poetry that would speak to the backgrounds and experiences my students are familiar with. I chose an anthology of poetry on slavery, one called Hip Hop Speaks to Children, and a book on poetry from the Jazz Age. I'm hopeful that with this collection of poetry, each of my students will be able to make a personal connection to a meaningful poem.
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Mrs. Emerling and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
