Chapter 5 & 14

Chapter 5 was about Poetry and the different elements that make it up. Now I don't know about the rest of you girls, but when I was a teenager and I was upset about some little boy, I always vented by writing a poem. Poetry was the "in" thing to do, and now without the children knowing it, so is Rap. Speaking of rap, the book says that poetry is a musical language. Poetry is suppose to skip, sing, and tug at you. Now Prof. Pickett, if you ever read this, or if anyone knows the answer, please advise me, but is Phonemic Awareness all about rhyming? Is it all song and poetry?
Next, I want to take the time to list the elements of poetry, because I found it interesting how we can read a poem, write a poem or sing a song (which is a poem), without even knowing all the parts that go into it. So the elements of poetry are: sound, rhyme, alliteration, assonance, rhythm, figurative language, shape, emotional force, and insight. When I was younger, I thought it was all about rhyme and rhythm, and I am sure that is what all the kids think it is also. It will be nice to break it down and teach the different attributes of poetry. When I was reading the chapter, I had no idea what alliteration was, and if you don't either, it is the reception of similar consonant sounds. Also, assonance, which means to repeat internal vowel sounds, which provide partial rhymes. I agree that poets use repetition when it comes to rhythm.
I want to share some other things I learned with you all starting with figurative language. Did you know that figurative language means to create meaning through imagination? And the shape of the poem is how you write it, or where you put the words? I didn't know about emotional force and how it provides an emotional response for the reader. I also did not know that insight meant, "initial experiences," or how the author wants the poem to linger in our minds. The insight should give us a new perspective and make us see things in a new light, like, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings." I thought it was cool to see how poetry was broken down. I also agree with performing and writing poetry. I remember when I was in 7th grade and we had to write a poem and how I took pride in that poem, even though I had been slacking in my work that year, the poetry assignment meant a lot to me. As a matter of fact, I think I still have that poem somewhere around here. And defiantly, encourage revision! I have binders of poems from when I was young that could have been so great had they been revised, so I am going to encourage my students to bring their poems and stories to me for help revising, no matter if they are assignments or not.
In Chapter 14, it discusses how we learn to write by reading and I never knew that. It's because we fall in love with books and listen to oral stories, and we come adapted to knowing what makes a good story and how good language sounds. Writing is a lifelong learning process, but once your children master the basics, they can learn to love it. We as teachers need to monitor what our students think about and do as they write.
I learned about the 5 aspects of writing, which are: prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. I remember how I use to hate rewriting over and over again and I still do. If only I learned to love it, then maybe it wouldn't be such a hassle for me these days. But don't get me wrong, I love to write papers, just not the same thing over and over again. :) How do we make that interesting? You can have all the traits of good writing, ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, and presentation, and still there are some teachers that make you revise. I think I am going to just look for these traits and help them build the aspects and foundations, versus being so demanding on the little things. I want them to feel free in expression, especially the ones who will struggle with writing. I do not want them to feel trapped but better to feel like they can do
it and love it.

"Author Study"
I am going to discuss 3 books from different authors but from the same genre, which is poetry.

First book is, "Down the Back of the Chair," by Margaret Mahy, which is a rhyming (poetry) book. It's about a little girl, who's Dad is struggling to make money for the family and she goes exploring what is down the back of the chair and what she finds, saves the day! It has a lot of repititon, but it makes it fun to read. I shared this book in class and my group loved it!

The second book is, "The Baby Uggs Are Hatching," by Jack Prelutsky, and it is about some unusual characters like The Uggs, The Quossible, The Sneepies, ect. There are 12 poems about unusual characters that will make your children's imaginations run wild. I would have them go back to their desks and make there own character and small poem to go with it! It's really cute and funny. And it also introduces a lot of vocabulary, some I even looked up!

The third is Shel Silverstein's first poetry collection, "Don't Bump the Glump," and what is a classroom library without Shel Silverstein in it! It is a collection of many small fantasy poems, with many different creatures of all kinds.