Chapter 9
Chapter 9 was broken up into a video, a description of the video, and criteria to evaluate children’s poetry. As the video states, poetry is the most negletic format because children don't feel comfortable with it, don’t know how to read it, are afraid to evaluate it, or simply had a bad experience. As an elementary student, I quickly realized that poetry was a type of genre that I knew I did not like. Although now I know that poetry is not a genre and just a type of format, I can still relate to all three reasons why a student wouldn’t enjoy poetry. I have always struggled with poetry because I dread having to dissect and evaluate the wording and/or meaning behind a poem. When I think of poetry, I think of “what does it mean to you?” because that was always a question I was asked in school. The research done by Ann Terry on the types of poetry children prefer is valuable information for elementary teachers and librarians. This information can become useful to begin that engagement for students to have for poetry. For example, the video described that narrative and funny poems, animal poems, and poems about familiar experiences were the best liked types of poems. Along with poems that have rhythm, rhyme and other sound devices were the most preferred types of poems. This information is important to remember when wanting to introduce poetry or to show students that poetry can be fun. As the video ends, the poem books by Ruth Heller that are shown serve as great examples of this, because her poem books can be used when discussing nouns, verbs, or adjectives. These can be used as an attention grabber before a lesson or when reviewing the different concepts. After watching the video, I feel more comfortable about poetry, feel as if I can incorporate poetry more into my classroom/library, and I don’t have to make it a dreading experience. Simply reading poems for the pure reason to enjoy can change a student’s perspective of poetry.
The other document included in this chapter provides great examples of poetry and poets to refer to when discussing different subjects. The document also discusses important key terms to remember that revolve around poetry and poems. Since I have never found a liking to reading poetry, I sort of blocked any terms that are associated with reading poems, so this document can come in handy so that I can learn more about important terms and can have them ready to use when I need to refer back to them.
Along with the video and document shown in this chapter, there are also five questions to think of when evaluating children poetry. As I mentioned with keeping the terms document handy for when it is needed, I can also keep the five evaluating questions with me when choosing a poem to use in my classroom or library.
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