As far as reading growth and development are concerned, first graders fall on a continuum of learning. Scarborough’s rope offers a visual for thinking about how students develop as readers. As readers develop, they should be increasing their language comprehension, which includes background knowledge, vocabulary, language structures, verbal reasoning, and literacy knowledge. This exists as one strand. They also should be increasing their word recognition, which includes phonological awareness, decoding, and sight recognition. This exists as a second strand. As these skills or “strands” develop and become intertwined, students become more accurate and strategic readers while still comprehending what they are reading (1). Both language comprehension and word recognition are vital for students to grow as fluent readers. As first graders, some students are still emerging as readers and need more focus around learning to decode words; other students are ready to learn more complex ideas around language, vocabulary, and knowledge. All students benefit from explicit instruction around reading comprehension.
This curriculum unit is designed for first graders; however, it could easily be taught to students in kindergarten through second grade, who are developing as early readers. Students in these grades are in the early stages of beginning to read. Students are learning to decode words while simultaneously learning to make meaning and to understand what they are reading through comprehension strategies. Poetry incorporates many language features that can help students with their word recognition abilities. Some of these features are alliteration, rhyme, and rhythm. These are all elements of phonological awareness, or the ability to manipulate and hear various sounds. This is an early indicator for reading ability and strengthening phonological awareness can help students grow in their ability to decode or read words. Students who enter preschool and kindergarten with the ability to rhyme words, isolate beginning or end sounds, and blend sounds together often learn to read more quickly. This foundation is laid at an early age with nursery rhymes and word manipulation games. Poetry can help children grow in their phonological awareness because of its language features. Word decoding is not an explicit focus of this curriculum, but students’ phonological awareness abilities still benefit from listening to and reading poetry.
With explicit comprehension instruction, students gain strategies to comprehend what they are reading. One major strategy that helps students understand what they are reading is visualizing. Visualization occurs across a variety of genres and lends itself to both prose and poetry. Poetry offers a starting point for learning the skill of visualization because it is often shorter and allows students to focus their cognitive attention on a specific line or stanza. Poems also offer snippets of imagery rich language, which allows students to focus on learning how to visualize before moving on to longer texts and eventually chapter books, which often lack illustrations (2). Visualization ensures that children are picturing what is happening in the text and understanding language, particularly language that is rich in imagery. This unit utilizes poetry as a tool to teach students how to visualize as they are reading. Visualization as a reading comprehension skill is one of the primary focuses of this unit.