April is National Poetry Writing Month, and poetry is celebrated nationwide in various ways. Open Mics feature new and seasoned poets reading or reciting poetry they have written. Poetry prompts pop up on your Instagram feed and are emailed to your inbox.
As adults, we choose which activities speak to us. We select a poetry reading, write our own poetry, post on Substack, or read one of our favorite poets for inspiration or motivation.
Research shows that writing or reading poetry can benefit preadolescents and adolescents who are dealing with an illness or some form of adversity. A 2021 study done by doctors at the Rhode Island Hospital/Hasbro Children’s Hospital found “that providing opportunities for them (hospitalized children) to read and write poetry reduced their fear, sadness, anger, worry, and fatigue.” (Chung, Delamerced, Monteiro, and Panicker, 2021)
How can we implement strategies and techniques to help students cultivate their emotions and feelings productively? We teach them different types of poetry that explore feelings and sensory details, creating images connected to memories.
I have observed a tendency in elementary school classrooms to focus ONLY on poetry in April, and the poems are typically the same few: Acrostic, Haiku, and Diamante.
Acrostic Poems are the easiest, especially if the students only write a word or phrase for each line. Instead, try having them write a list poem or Anaphora. List poems are catalog poems designed to list names, places, objects, thoughts, and images in a cohesive manner. Famous list poems include Homer’s Iliad, Allan Ginsberg’s Howl, and Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself.
As elementary educators, we know that those are not the most useful examples for students. These are references for adults. Try this lesson.
✏️ Choose a topic. (Spring, Favorite Possession, Favorite Place, Favorite Holiday, or any random object from a novel you are reading with the class.)
📝 Students list everything that object, place, holiday, or season reminds them of in words and phrases. Include how it makes them feel.
📝 In groups or small groups, students revise their phrases and words into a poem, using commas or slash marks.
✏️ Students type the final poem and include a picture.
The complete Lesson Plan is attached, with links to “I am From” by George Ella Lyon and “Sick” by Shel Silverstein: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K_fLGN9QJjS5hQ40CDTx6qhesYlIuAFIHGDTdBVpibo/copy
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