Poetry in the library?

As a marketing professional, I don’t often have the opportunity to work on creative writing. The copy I write is sales-focused (although I try to create engaging descriptions!). I am enjoying learning about different genres and writing drafts for my genre pieces project. Through all of this, I am trying to think about different ways that I could apply learning about the genres into the school library. I wrote about some ideas for journal writing in the library in a previous entry here, but now I’d like to focus on my new understanding of poetry and how to teach it in the library.

Tompkins’ chapter 7 talks about writing poetry, and my classmate Catherine did a wonderful presentation on writing color poems to accompany our reading. I haven’t studied poetry in years, and I really enjoyed this chapter and reading mentor texts. I decided to write an acrostic poem for my genre pieces project inspired by Schnur’s Summer:An alphabet acrostic (2011). Like Schnur’s poems, I tried to incorporate some

An excerpt from Schnur's
Summer: An alphabet acrostic.
Image sourced here

lines that would read together as one sentence instead of every line standing on its own. My poem is written for my son and contains several vertical words that will read together as one phrase. Here is an excerpt of my acrostic poem using the words “my son.”

My son, my heart, my Dylan

You have changed me in so many ways

Someday you will leave my arms

Out in the world to build your own dreams

New experiences await you

While I love writing and would love to teach writing, I was concerned that my passion wasn’t part of what librarians do. Earlier this week, I visited Brookview Elementary School in the West Irondequoit School District to observe librarian Julianne Westrich. As luck would have it, Juli was teaching a unit on language that day!

In the third grade class I observed, Juli taught them how to write a book spine poem, a poem using only book titles. She began with a minilesson, modeled a few examples she had written, and then had the students write their own poem using piles of pre-selected books. She reminded them that the poems needed to contain the exact language found on the book spines with no added words, and that the poems probably wouldn’t rhyme. In chapter 7, Tompkins says that “although rhyme is considered an essential poetic device, it shouldn’t dominate students’ poems" (p. 161). I think this was a good activity to not only teach them how to write a poem, but also to show them that poetry doesn’t need to rhyme. I wish that Juli had asked the students to share some of their poems, but unfortunately the class had to stop their activity so that they still had time for book checkout. If I taught this lesson, I would want to include a poetry café element so that students had the opportunity to share their work and receive positive feedback from their peers, perhaps in the next class if time prevented us.

In the first grade class I observed, Juli was talking about personification. She did three read-alouds including the fiction book Narwhal: Unicorn of the Sea by Ben Clanton (2016), and parts of two non-fiction books about narwhals and jellyfish. Tompkins talks about personification as a poetic device in chapter 7. After explaining the concept to students (and learning that narwhals are real creatures!) the students worked together with Juli to personify an animal together. I loved this activity and think that it was developmentally appropriate for the students (Juli told me she plans her lessons based on Common Core standards; the Writing Strand is standard 10). It was interesting to see how she also incorporated a minilessson on fiction/nonfiction texts through her read-alouds. I would love to teach a similar lesson if I were working in an elementary library.

Narwhal: Unicorn of the Sea 
by Ben Clanton. Image sourced here

I am excited to see that librarians like Juli are finding ways to teach poetry/poetic devices in the library that address State Standards. I look forward to learning more about the genres and making connections to the work of a modern library media specialist! 

Sources

Clanton, B. (2016). Narwhal: Unicorn of the sea. New York: Tundra Books.

National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, Council of Chief State School Officers. Common Core State Standards. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, Council of Chief State School Officers, Washington D.C. 2010

Schnur, S. (2001). Summer: An alphabet acrostic. New York: Clarion Books.

The importance of interactive read-alouds and learning how to design a writing workshop

While I believe all students should have a chance to write about their interests so that they can find joy in writing, it’s important to guide students to become better writers. Teachers use interactive read-alouds to give students examples of good writing and to introduce various genres (Tompkins, 27). In my library, I would choose both fiction and nonfiction high-quality books to read to my students. Exposing them to a wide variety of literature in different genres would open their eyes to the many styles of writing. Once exposed to these texts, we could discuss what makes them unique and then students (working with their classroom teacher) could create their own stories using the elements they learned about from the mentor texts.

Tompkins references Heffernan’s research (2004)which found that young students needed guidance to write about topics beyond the superficial. While students may initially delight in writing about their loved ones and pets, he noticed the essays began to lack passion and students were bored with writing. However, they didn’t know what to write about next. Heffernan successfully used mentor texts to introduce students to social issues. These issues were reflected in their writings (as cited in Tompkins, p. 26).

When thinking about encouraging students to write, my inclination would be to let them write about their passions. It surprised me that even a favorite topic could grow stale, but it surprised me even more that young children could be influenced to write about deeper issues based on age-appropriate mentor texts for interactive read-alouds. Using these mentor texts appropriately would help develop young writers into critical thinkers. I also had not considered that any example of writing could be a mentor text, including, as Tompkins states, “poems, magazines, Internet articles, email messages, newspapers, and instructions manuals. (p. 27) The modern school library media specialist is expected to embrace all modes of text, including those beyond the library shelf. It would be interesting to see how I could use texts to share examples of different kinds of writing with my students.

While I haven’t led a reading/writing workshop, I believe it would be relatively easy to set up my library or classroom for optimal learning and lay the groundwork to establish a community of learners. As an adult, I have attended several writing workshops. The best ones had the students arranged in a way that allowed for easy collaboration, such as facing each other around a table even though we were focused on individual writing projects. Even better ones allowed time to share our works and receive compliments and light feedback from our peers.

What would be challenging is learning how to differentiate instruction, especially when working with struggling and advanced students in the same grade. I’m not sure yet how a librarian may need to differentiate instruction, but I do believe that all teachers (including the librarian) need to know how to meet the needs of all their students.

Tompkins provides some useful tips for differentiating instruction, including the use of tiered writing projects (p. 36) in a writing workshop. She explains that in tiered writing projects, “teachers create several tiered or related activities that focus on the same essential knowledge but vary in complexity (36).” Students work on projects with various levels of complexity, and use different mediums (create posters, write reports, etc.) to achieve their goals. Like all means of differentiating instruction, it’s important that tiering be made invisible so that students don’t make comparisons between one another.

I look forward to learning more about how to tier reading/writing workshop and differentiate instruction so that all students can be successful.