This curriculum unit is designed to teach first graders the comprehension strategy of visualization through poetry. It could also be adapted for early readers—grades kindergarten through second. This unit explores poems as sound, their accompanying illustrations, and the objects that they become. This curriculum is designed to be taught for four weeks with four or five lessons a week. As a class, students will read different poems in a variety of styles: silly poetry, shape and concrete poetry, science poetry, and poems by Black poets. Each style of poetry will be covered over a week. Students will have the opportunity to read and listen to poems read aloud. After reading each poem, students will then visualize what they see happening in the poem and discuss it with their peers. Students will also illustrate each poem with what they visualized in a personal poetry booklet that includes the poems that we have read. We will follow this protocol throughout the unit. At the end of the unit, students will have a book full of their illustrations to accompany the poetry that we have read.
(Developed for English Language Arts, grade 1; recommended for English Language Arts, grades K and 2)
