Kovalcik and Certo

The article titled The Poetry Café is open is about students learning the art of writing poetry. The students are in second grade and they are doing a unit about poems from Lucy Calkins. In order to teach the students about poetry there are a few mini lessons for the teachers to use to teach these techniques to the students. The first mini lesson is called “color and rhyme”. The teachers use poems to model the technique of rhyming. They use poems that use color words because these words have a large handful of exact rhymes which would make it easier for students to use words that they know. The students are then given time to create their own poems that involve rhyming. The second mini lesson is called “repetition and alliteration”. They started this time by reading the students a poem which demonstrates repetition and alliteration. “Colorful use of words adds richness in language within the framework or poetic expressions. (90)” . They then told the students that the definition of alliterations is, “two or more words or syllables, near each other, with the same beginning consonants”. The students were then directed to write their own poems using this aspect of poetry. The third mini lesson is called “Can you say ‘onomatopoeia?”. The teachers began this mini lesson by having students come to the front of the room and model making a noise such as clapping your hands or stomping your feet. They then informed the students that the words that make those sounds are called onomatopoeia. The fourth and final mini lesson is called “collaborative poetry”. The class then created a web as a whole. In the middle of the web were the words” our class is like…”. They added to the web as student came up with ideas. The class then made a class poem together. They then shared their poetry to their family in a café like setting.

I would definitely use this approach at my grade level. I am in first grade and we use the Lucy Calkins curriculum for our writing piece. I think the main piece of writer’s workshop is the modeling. In my class the students model the correct way to do something and they model the incorrect way so that other student can see what they should and shouldn’t be doing. The students respond very well to the way the Lucy Calkins curriculum is set up. We just started the introduction to petry in our writers workshop. The lessons in first grade do not go as in depth as those that were demonstrated in the article but they were given a few examples of poems. Some of the students were very eager to begin writing poems. If I were doing this same thing in my classroom I would do it about the same. I wouldn’t try to introduce such complex ideas to them because they still have a lot of growing to do in their writing but I would maybe include one or two more lessons about poetry than they currently have. I think the idea of doing a poetry café give the students such a sense of ownership in their work. If they concentrate and work on one poem I think they could make it great by adding details to it and some of their known words. My students are also very good at detecting rhyming words so I think they would be able to add that technique into their writing also. By inviting their parents and friends it gives them the chance to brag about everything they’ve done. I think this is important and writers to share you work because it provides positive feedback and it can also provide them with constructive criticism which will lead to them growing as writers.

In order to use this in my classroom I think I would need to know more about poetry myself. I also think it would be good to use examples of poems that are on the same level of their writing. Somewhat detailed but generally still simple and using easier words than were used in the article. I also think it is very important to be able to confer with the students in a productive but not overpowering manner. I have experienced some conferring in my classroom with the Lucy Calkins piece but it a very hard task to master. It is very hard to ask students leading questions in order to provoke their thinking.

I think in order to prepare for my Guided Lead Teaching lessons I need to read the Lucy Calkins books carefully and learn the language that they use so that I can carry that language over to my students. I will informally assess their writing in the weeks leading up to my lesson. I will review the works that they have done and I will see if they have made any progress so far in the year and it will also give me an idea of things that I need to concentrate on and focus on while also introducing new material. In my classroom the students write four days a week. I don’t think a formal assessment such as a writing prompt would be effective. I think it would be just as easy for me to read their works and informally assess them from their daily writings.