Using Poems with Young Learners

Welcome – read on for the FREEBIE!

I love teaching young learners with poems.  Using poetry promotes literacy, engagement, builds confidence and community.  Did you know that April is National Poetry Month?  April is right around the corner…what a perfect time to think about incorporating more poetry into your classroom.  Whether you teach Kindergarten or 5th grade poetry is a powerful teaching tool to use in your classroom.  

   Think about growing up and all the songs, chants and poems you remember.  Poetry has a way of staying in both your mind and your heart.  It often brings back warm memories of your childhood.  Why not use that as a guiding force in your teaching?  Young learners can find more confidence in their reading skills with poetry.  They can quickly recognize familiar words and remember rhyming word family words.  It’s a great way to reinforce sight words and rhyming.

Reading poetry fosters curiosity and introduces even your youngest learners to soul and rhythm.  It also can build upon your Speaking and Listening standards by having beginning readers read short poems in front of their peers.  The children that are listening can respond to the poem or point out rhyming words to an elbow partner.  It also is beneficial to all learners.  Your ELL learners can remember simple rhymes and poems which can help scaffold their learning.  Poems can be universal.

The use of poetry engages students.  They are drawn in to the rhyming and natural rhythm that comes from poetry.  They can use poems to search for patterns, rhyming words, sight words and familiar words they know.  In the midst of them finding these words they are gaining confidence due to repetition and simple wording that can often be found in poems.

I have a product line of these poems that lend themselves perfectly for the K-2 classroom.  Here are some samples:

I’m so happy to make my sampler pack FREE for you this week to help me celebrate my time on TPT.  Here is a peek at my sampler pack:  Click on the photo below to grab it free – week of 3/13/16 only! Please don’t forget to leave feedback ~ I’d love to hear what you think of it.  

Remember if you love it you can grab the bundle 

( 3 more different packs – here )

I hope you find as much success in your classroom with these interactive poems as I’ve had.  Here are some reviews of what teachers think of these packs: 

If you use poems in your classroom please share what you have found to be beneficial below in the comments.  I’d love to hear from you!  

xo,

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