Yolanda U. Trapp
In the New Haven Public Schools we are committed to high standards in all areas of the Language Arts and Multicultural Curriculum. The performance standards for Language Arts are skill based and designed to cross all the curriculum areas.
Participating in the Seminar about “Women Writers in Latin America” will give me, and also parents, students, and community, a grade-by-grade overview of expectations for New Haven students. Through the Curriculum I place special emphasis on Latin Literacy as the foundations of all school success. It will be the most meaningful effort I will ever undertake on behalf of our children.
How do I bring out the best and brightest in my students?
By bringing the best and brightest poems selected from Latin Women writers, I will take poetry to the stage, selecting poems that appeal to me and that show action, thinking of myself as an actor with a role and reading the poem the way I would read a play, with facial expressions and other body movements. Providing students with daily opportunities to practice skills in vocabulary, comprehension, writing, listening, through appropriate poetry selections, I will support student’s higher level of thinking and learning. With poems, I intend to open a world of feelings to children of elementary grades. As educators we must lead children into poetry written by these exceptional women. They share with us universal problems; traditions, family life, sexuality, relationships with peers, friendships, education, and career goals. In their writing they are giving us an intense creativity, originality, and tenacity in the face of adversity.
I believe that through selected poems of Latin Women, I will find a more holistic approach to teaching reading and Language Arts, and students will discover the connection between reading, writing, listening, and speaking. The distinctive language of poetry cannot help but enrich children’s vocabularies. Once children are familiar with poems, due to their rhyme, rhythm, reception or structure, they can make innovations from simple substitutions of a single word to the creation of an entirely new poem that uses the pattern, but little of the language, of the original.
Poetry promotes writing in dozens of ways; when children innovate on poems as described they gain confidence in writing and begin to view themselves as authors. Children not only read and respond to a rich variety of poetry, they also learn about the craft. Through frequent discussion and daily opportunities to write, students link what they learn to their own writing development as well.
Interest in the use of poetry to teach reading and writing has increased as more teachers and administrators seek to re-examine the way literacy is taught at school. I have been moving toward teaching that writing is a process, so I have oriented my reading program too. The use of strategies such as shared reading and literature response groups seem to fit in well with my writing program. I am attracted to the idea to the selection of quality poetry written by Latin Women. The move toward Literature-based reading and writing may occur in a single classroom, a single school, or in an entire school district. This is one of my objectives. Through varied experiences with poetry written by Latin Women, students are helped to see the naturally occurring patterns in text. It is through wide exposure to these patterns that the strategies and skill needed to read and write effectively are developed. These literacy strategies are made explicit through continued, varied exposure and through specific teacher-guided activities.
How can I build a community of Learners in my room while addressing my student’s various learning styles and abilities?
The answer: poetry. Poetry has no grade level. All children benefit from exposure to it, but poetry is especially helpful to readers with disabilities. Poetry can be both a stimulant and an equalizer, placing children of differing learning styles and achievement levels on the same footing.
A lot of poetry can be discovered in a little time. Poems can be short, powerful, easy to read, and wonderful. They can be an integral part of reading, writing, social studies, science, and math.
