Jamie A. Griffin
There is much research to support the importance of poetry in early literacy. A study conducted by Huffington Post reported that “Poetry can help with language development, creative language skills, writing skills, self-expression, and the development of natural rhythm.”4 When I thought about how many benefits there were to using poetry in my classroom I knew that I needed to utilize it more often. I decided to further explore the importance of all of these skills to determine how they would benefit my students.
Language Development
“All children need opportunities to develop their oral language throughout the primary grades. Speaking up in front of an audience, participating in a group oral presentation, and mastering the pronunciation of progressively more challenging vocabulary are important skills for every linguistic and cultural background.”5 Research has shown that developing strong oral language skills is critically important in the lower grades but should still be a focus in the upper elementary grades. Poetry is an amazing resource for teachers to use to help cultivate these skills.
The National Institute of Deafness and Communication Disorders states that language development skills “develop best in a world that is rich in sounds, sights, and consistent exposure to the speech and language of others.”6 While language development typically occurs during the first three years it is important to keep an environment rich in sounds, sights, speech, and language throughout the primary grades. It is also important to think about the fact that not every child attends preschool. Therefore, these students who did not attend preschool may have had less access to speech and language development than their peers who did attend preschool.
There have been studies which research how preschool students perform in their language development after participating in different literacy based activities. Students who are often read to and engaging vocabulary score higher than their peers who did not get this language exposure. One study focused on interactive book reading and the results were as followed:
“Teachers read books to children and reinforced the vocabulary in the books by presenting concrete objects that represented the words and by providing children with multiple opportunities to use the book-related words... This provided children with opportunities to use language and learn vocabulary in a meaningful context. Children who were in the interactive book reading intervention group scored significantly better than children in the comparison group on Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-III and other measures of receptive and expressive language.”7
The activities used in this study can be used in the same way with poetry instead of books in the primary grades. I would read poetry with my students and then reinforce the vocabulary used in the poem. I would then discuss the poem using open-ended questions. This would allow my students opportunities to use the vocabulary from each poem. These types of activities will promote further development of oral language skills for all students. Any easy way to digitize these activities is to use an online poetry library to access the poems. Many of these websites have poems divided by category so it would be easy to focus on specific content area vocabulary. Furthermore, the internet can be used to look up words that students do not understand. They can use online dictionaries, encyclopedias, videos, or other websites to further develop the meaning behind certain words. Students would learn how to use the internet as a tool in language development.
Creative Language Skills
We are experiencing an epidemic of children who are no longer as creative as they have been in the past. Therefore, many educators are experiencing a lack of creativity in their classrooms. Educators are producing creative language resources at a rapid pace to combat this area of concern. However, these teachers created resources may not be needed as much as art needs to be implemented back into the classroom. “Perhaps the most straightforward form of creativity is art, which can include stories, plays, music, poems, mime and dance. These activities diversify coursework, require extremely proactive participation and establish a positive classroom environment.”8 Poems are just one art form that can easily breed creativity within the classroom. Beyond this, many other art forms can be accessed digitally by young students. Experiencing the arts can help them to hone in on the creative language skills that they are lacking. Poetry frames and generators exist online and can lend a hand to students who are struggling to fill in the blanks in their poetry. Using this type of digital source can show students how they can use technology to feel creative. It will also further support the development of their creative language skills.
Writing Skills
The writing skills that students are expected to meet by the end of each year are clearly laid out in the Common Core Standards. Most of the Writing Standards are aimed at non-fiction texts and the specific criteria for this type of text. Writing poetry can easily fall under Language or Speaking and Listening standards but may not correlate directly to the Writing Standards. For this reason, I would implement poetry into my literacy block and not my writing block. Poetry can help students distinguish between uppercase and lowercase letters, as well as determining the meaning of adjectives within the poems. Beyond this, poems can also take place in the past, present, or future. This can help students identify which tense they are using. Reading and listening to poetry can expose students to many of these language standards.
In turn, they will reach a higher level of Bloom’s Taxonomy when they apply these skills and write their own poems. The highest level of Bloom’s Taxonomy is the tier of creation. Verbs that are commonly used to describe activities that focus on this level are design, author, investigate, construct, and assemble. Constructing or designing a poem would allow students to reach this level of Bloom’s Taxonomy. This would ensure that they were engaged in rigorous and meaningful work. Even though poetry is not a genre of writing that is expected of students in first grade, the benefits of students writing their own poetry persuade me that it is necessary for them to engage in this kind of text.
Unfortunately, lower elementary teachers are often trying to prepare their students for higher order thinking skills and standardized testing that will occur in later grades. And while I do not prescribe to “teaching to the test” I do want my students to be as prepared as possible when it is their turn to take these tests. Teaching them how to understand and analyze poetry regardless of its form and then write their own poems will provide them with so much valuable practice in language and writing skills. Students can also type their poems since typing is an aspect of standardized testing. Some students only have access to phones or tablets, this hinders their ability to type on a keyboard. Being able to practice their typing skills in first grade would help them to be more successful later in their school years.
Self-Expression
Self-Expression is defined as the expression of one’s feelings, thoughts, or ideas, especially in writing, art, music, or dance. Self-expression can be challenging for young students who are still not sure who they are. A problem many young people face today is creating their “online persona”. Your online persona is how you present yourself online but it may not always be a true representation of who you really are. Writing can be extremely personal and allow students to explore all facets of themselves. They may develop a better sense of who they are through writing. “With every post, every tweet, and every share, your digital native is creating a persona, even as she is experimenting with her identity. It’s a virtual high-wire act, and she’s bound to have some missteps.”9 Every time you post something, it gets added to the collection that will eventually make up your online persona. I want my students to feel as though they could truly express themselves and be who they are, but I will need to make sure it is not anything that could come back and harm them later on in life. This is a fine line to walk since I do want my students to take ownership of their poetry. However, I must also ensure that they do not create anything they would eventually regret. I would have to be sure that my students feel secure in their self-expression when they give me their finished product. Through our final project of sharing work digitally students will get to experience how self-expression relates to technology.
Development of Natural Rhythm
Natural Rhythm while reading is strongly connected to fluency. Most definitions of reading fluency include three observable and measurable components: accuracy, rate, and expression (sometimes referred to as prosody).10
Accuracy
Scholastic defines accuracy as the ability to read words without making mistakes.11 Young students often struggle with accuracy since they are still learning phonics and determining what letters and sounds make up words. Poetry can help them learn these phonemic chunks through rhyme. This will help them read more fluently while in text. Fluency is a large goal in first grade. In Connecticut the standard created by the state is that by the end of first grade students will be able to read 32 words accurately in one minute. This is slightly faster than 2 words a second. Becoming familiar with rhyming patterns through poetry may help more students reach this goal.
Some websites which read aloud to students highlight the word which is being read. If students are following along with the digital text, they will see the word light up as it is read. This helps students become more accurate when reading as they have been exposed to the word more frequently.
Rate
Rate is defined by Scholastic is how quickly a student is able to read.12 If students are struggling to decode the sounds in words, then they will have a slower reading rate. Poetry can be read repetitively which helps the students to read more quickly as they become more familiar with the text. Poems can also offer an awareness and pleasure for sounds. This can be explicitly taught to students as poems are seen as more playful than books. This is largely due to rhyming patterns. These rhyming patterns can show students that words with similar sounds and structures have similar pronunciation. Reading poems will also give them more time in text in general which will positively influence their rate as well. Hearing the poems read aloud through a digital platform may help students to hear how the words should sound. Then when the students read it, they will be practicing at the appropriate rate. Rate is also necessary for students to reach the end of year goal of 32 words in one minute.
Expression
Lastly, expression “refers to the ability to change your voice to show feeling when reading.”13 Expression is the part of natural rhythm which my young students struggle with the most. This is something that develops over time as students get better at understanding what they are reading. Poetry lends itself nicely to expression since most poems are expressive. Students can learn that there are feelings in poems and figure out how to express these feelings while reading them. This practice will help them to be expressive when reading other genres as well. The natural rhythm in poetry can also help students identify the expression of the poem. When reading a poem students are able to feel the shift in feelings this guides them to express the changes appropriate when reading it orally. Finally, when my students craft their own poems, they will read them with the expression that they desire to convey. Some students still struggle to identify how they are feeling in first grade. Having an outlet to express these feelings may give students a chance to understand themselves and their feelings more. Many digital resources for online poetry include having them read aloud or performed, using these sources could help students to understand the emotion and expression within these poems.