In order to be able to teach students about the sounds of poetry, the teacher must first familiarize him/herself with the literary devices used to convey rich sounds, and through sound, mood, and meaning, in poems. In this section, I will provide a brief explanation of the different sound-based poetic techniques. These techniques have allowed poems to survive since before the written tradition and help infuse poems with the emotion they so successfully convey. As teacher of this unit, take some time to read poetry (whether children's poetry or anything else!) to immerse yourself in the genre you will be teaching to your students, and to form a deeper understanding for yourself of the concepts you will be using with your class.
Alliteration
Alliteration is the repetition of the initial consonant in a number of words on the same line in a poem. For example, in Paul Fleischman's poem "Whirligig Beetles", he uses many words beginning with the letters "w", "b", and "s" as he writes:
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We're whirligig beetles,
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We're swimming in circles,
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Black backs by the hundred,
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We're spinning and swerving,
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As if we're on a mad merry-go-round.
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Encouraging students to attend to alliteration in poetry will not only teach them how poets use this sound technique to create vibrant language, but will also help them understand letter-sound correspondence in English (a concept they may already be familiar with in Spanish). They will identify the many words that begin with the same letter, and practice making that sound over and over as they discover, repeat, and perform the poems.
Onomatopoeia
Onomatopoeia is the property of some words that the word itself seems to sound like the idea it refers to. In one of Joyce Sidman's animal poems, "Budgie Babies" about the Australian Budgerigar Parakeet, the poet uses onomatopoeia to help the reader visualize the ruckus in the budgie nest at mealtime:
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Budgie babies bellow boldly,
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brawl and
babble
,
screech
and
squeal
,
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push and pummel brothers, sisters,
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for a tasty budgie meal.
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If you read these words aloud, you can't help but make a babbling sound as you read the word "babble", and a screeching sound as you read the word "screech". Students will be able to create a mental image, complete with sound effects, of what a nest of hungry budgies looks like as the birds
babble, screech,
and
squeal.
Furthermore, onomatopoeia will also help to teach students new vocabulary words that they will understand because they are vivid and contextually relevant, and they will hopefully begin to incorporate these words into their speech and writing to boost their English language production.
Rhyme
Rhyme, as we all know, is the repetition of similar ending sounds in words, most often at the end of lines of poetry. Most children's poems are rhyming poems, as in Jack Prelutsky's poem, "Jellyfish Stew":
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You're soggy, you're
smelly
,
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you taste like
shampoo
,
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you bog down my
belly
,
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with oodles of
goo
,
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yet I would glue
noodles
-
and prunes to my
shoe
,
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for one oozy
spoonful
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of jellyfish
stew
.
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In this poem, the last word of every other line rhymes, which is a common format in children's poetry. Rhyming is a very important pre-literacy skill, as it helps students in their word attack and decoding skills when they can make analogies between known words and words in the same word family. It is also important that students learn that in English, the same sound can be made by using a variety of different vowels and blends, while at the same time words that look the same can sound different. Rhyming poems are a great tool to highlight this fact and show students examples (i.e. goo/shoe/stew) of words that rhyme but are spelled with different vowel blends.
Rhythm
Rhythm is often expressed as a repeated pattern of stressed and unstressed words and/or syllables. Rhythm can give a poem a feeling that it is moving fast or slow. In her poem "Rope Rhyme," Eloise Greenfield uses the rhythm of her words to create the quick, methodical rhythm of a jump rope:
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Get set, ready now, jump right in
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Bounce and kick and giggle and spin
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Listen to the rope when it hits the ground
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Listen to that clappedy-slappedy sound.
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Without even analyzing the accents or stresses of particular words and/or syllables, students can already hear the rhythm of the poem. However, teaching students to identify where the stress in the words falls will help them learn how to break words into syllables, another important pre-literacy skill that teaches students how to use their knowledge of syllables to break apart multisyllabic words and decode them piece by piece. Teaching students to systematically find the stressed and unstressed syllables in poems will also help them in their reading fluency so that they learn to listen to themselves as they read and make their reading expressive while staying true to the author's intention and the tone of the text.
Repetition
Repetition is the repeated use of the same word, phrase, or line in a poem, to highlight its importance. In her poem "Things", Eloise Greenfield repeats the line "ain't got it no more" and "still got it" to emphasize the temporariness of physical things in contrast with the timelessness of a poem:
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Went to the corner
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Walked into the store
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Bought me some candy
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Ain't got it no more
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Ain't got it no more […]
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Went into the kitchen
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Lay down on the floor
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Made me a poem
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Still got it
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Still got it.
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By attending to repetition in poetry, students will work on making meaning of the poet's words as well as practice reading the same line again and again, adding it to their repertoire of vocabulary and language structures.
Tone
The tone of a poem is the feeling that its words convey—the emphasis is not on
what
is said but rather on
how
it is said and in what context. In the words of the great poet Robert Frost, "the sentence that takes rank as poetry must do double duty. It will not neglect the meaning it can convey in words; but it will succeed chiefly by some meaning it conveys by tone of voice."
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While tone is a sound-based poetic device, it is deeply connected with the meaning of the poem. We must think about the poet's intention and the narrator's point of view in order to properly convey his/her message in our reading of the poem. In Eloise Greenfield's poem "I Look Pretty", the narrator is putting on her mother's clothing and looking at herself in the mirror, discussing how beautiful she feels:
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Mama's shiny purple coat
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Giant-sized shoulder bag to tote […]
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I look pretty
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I float
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I smile
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I pose.
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To communicate Eloise Greenfield's intention, we must put ourselves in the place of a young girl feeling grown-up and beautiful in her mother's clothes, and read it with a sense of sophistication and confidence.
Conversely, the tone of Jack Prelutsky's narrator in his poem "The Snowman's Lament" is quite different as he describes the tragic fate of the snowman in spring:
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My snowman sadly bowed his head
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in March, one sunny day,
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and this is what he softly said
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before he went away.
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Encouraging students to think about the tone of a poem will help them connect with the poem's meaning, as well as improve their reading fluency and expressive reading skills, as they are required to think about how to read with the appropriate inflection, intonation, pace, and volume to convey the poem's message.
