Poetry is a genre of reading that opens many doors for students. The text often flows like a song. It can be short but still hold complex meaning. Poetry lends itself well to repeated reading and fluency practice. It is a wonderful way for ELLs to practice oral language skills. When you are selecting poems to read with students make sure to include diverse poems that highlight a range of cultures and topics. Here are some tips for using poetry…
Teaching rhyming and word families are simple ways to include phonemic awareness and phonics activities. Recognizing and producing rhymes is one aspect of phonemic awareness. This is a skill that emergent readers experience through games, listening to stories and nursery rhymes. For older ELLs, rhyming often does not come as naturally. Rhyming ability is one predictor of reading success. It is not necessary to spend a large amount of time on rhyming activities. Short exposure is just as beneficial as…
April is National Poetry Month, which makes it a great time for writing poetry. Any point in the year is also a great time to have students write poems. For English Language Learners, writing poetry can be a welcome change from other forms of writing. Many of the traditional writing conventions are not as strictly enforced in poems. Students can use fewer words to convey powerful messages. Poems are a fun way to play around with language. Here are some…
Poetry is a wonderful genre to share with students. For ELLs, it is a great way to expose them to rhyming words and other ways to play with words. Poems are typically short and lend themselves well to being read out loud. This helps build students reading fluency and oral language skills. Poetry is also a way for ELLs to analyze more complex text, even if they are reading below grade level. Poetry is a great opportunity to share books…
My second graders are starting a unit on poetry. As an introduction we read what am I poems. Each poem described an animal or food. They students enjoyed trying to guess what food/animal it was describing. https://mcdn.teacherspayteachers.com/thumbitem/What-Am-I-Poems-2558976-1463706256/original-2558976-2.jpg For my low language ELL students, I also have vocabulary sheets that they could refer to while guessing. https://mcdn1.teacherspayteachers.com/thumbitem/What-Am-I-Poetry-Bundle-2557790-1463706452/original-2557790-4.jpg Then they used a template to write their own what am I poems. There were great for my struggling writers. They did not get…