This page is designed to share the poetry pieces we have written in class as a result of our unit of study.  Our course text, Units of Study is based on the underlying framework that what we write should be inspired by what we read. From immersing ourselves in a variety of well-written poetry textx and spending time in close study noticing author's craft, we have each tried our hands at writing our own poetry pieces.  Please post yours here and specifically address "What have you read that is like what you are trying to write?"  In other words, let us know your mentor text(s) and any author's craft you were intentional about implementing.   *Please add your first and last name and the title and author of your text with your post. 

Poetry Unit of Study - Lindsay Blanton

Teacher and Student Samples:

I tried to scan in several student samples completed throughout this unit of poetry.  The students LOVED reading poems, studying about poetry, and writing poems.  They ALL wanted their samples selected for this class and put on the internet.  I collected them all and said everyone will get to see the wonderful work you've done in class.   

Here is an example I wrote for the students after we read Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?  We began to study poetry and the characteristics and wrote about a lot of animals.  We selected several books with animal poems for the close study.

Teacher Example:

Hedgehog, Hedgehog

You sing like a BEE!

That really, really hurts ME!

Some of my favorite pieces were the shape poems.  We studied about concrete poems through Love That Dog, other mentor texts, and teacher modeling.  They did the cutest pieces and thought it was so cool to write a poem in a shape!  Shown here is a shape poem about the Sun:

The book Pet Poems and Animal Snackers has all kinds of examples using similes, hyperbole, alliteration, etc.  Some of the next few examples are about animals using similes, repeating lines, line breaks, rhyming words, punctuation, and bold words.  The students had a great time writing poetry and the illustrations and poems show how creative they are and how much the mentor texts helped them with their understanding. 

I'm not sure why the picture didn't show up on this example, but you can see how precious the poem is!  This is an example of the students using the mentor texts - Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? along with other poems and making their poem with rhyming words, line breaks, and repeating lines.   

One of our mentor text, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?  was a beginning writing of poetry for this class.  We began to read and study poetry and used a book they were familiar with at the beginning of the unit of study.  The teacher and I thought about the repeating words and questioning that takes places in the book.  The students wrote their own version and some changed the animal.  We used rhyming words - everyone's favorite part about poetry - make it rhyme!

This example brings in the questioning and similes were studied.  Through the mentor text poems in When Riddles Come Rumbling, students highlighted similes in groups and then we shared together and discuss the two things being compared within the sentence.  The students discovered how many similes are found in poems and other books were they were independently reading.  It became their favorite task - find a simile!  So, writing them was just as much fun.  The students could choose any animal and write a poem about it. 

The Buttefly Jar  inspired a lesson for writing about butterflies.  The students wrote similes and tried to use rhyming words with their poems. 

Lindsay Blanton - The Poetry Unit of Study was the first time I've worked with a teacher and helped with a unit of study with the reading immersion and close study using the direction on Katie Wood Ray's Study Driven.  We planned the unit and used Lucy Calkin's Primary Kit Unit of Study as the basis for mini-lessons and ideas.  The students loved it!

Joan Green's Unit of Study - Poetry - Student Writing

I have read poetry throughout the year, so I thought this would be a simple unit of study for my students.  Not really.  We did a full week of poetry immersion and noticings.  Only one or two students were eager to begin writing poetry at that point.  It actually took another week of really noticing and enjoying the poetry.  I think it was helpful, too, to share whenever any students finished a piece of poetry.  It seems that when they realized how uncritical I was going to be, they then had the courage to try poetry for themselves. 

After studying Jack Prelutsky's A Pizza the Size of the Sun, in which he has several shape poems, the following were written. 

 Nelson's Poetry Sample.doc

Anna's Poetry Sample.doc

Our school celebrated Poetry Month by having "Poem in Your Pocket Day."  One of the poems my students chose to have in their pocket that day was Robert Munsch's "Brothers."  This became the mentor text for Tyuanna's poem, "Sisters."

Tyuanna's Poetry Sample.doc

Brianna loved the poem, "The Zombie" from Marilyn Singer's book of poems, Monster Museum.  This poem was her mentor poem for her poem about the "Brianna Walk."

Brianna's Poetry Sample.doc

The mentor text that helped my students the most was Jack Prelutsky's A Pizza the Size of the Sun. They absolutely loved his shape poems. Once they got started on shape poems, I couldn't hold them back. I think one thing they love about it is drawing the picture first and then coming up with the poem.

By the end of the study, my students were getting much better at being able to share the mentor texts they used to write their own poems.

Poetry has been the hardest unit of study for me to teach. Probably because it's not always easy to verbalize exactly how the author made the poem speak to our hearts. I think the immersion and the noticings were very helpful with this.

Yes, I will teach poetry again next year. Hopefully it will be a bit easier.

Now that my students have taken the plunge into poetry, I will probably have a difficult time getting them interested in our new unit of study.

Student Samples from Amber Pitts' 1st Graders

 My students really enjoyed writing poetry! At first I just let them write without peer editing and publishing. Then I had them choose at least 2 poems to publish and we had a poetry party where students shared their 2 poems with the class. Here are some examples...of course I wanted to choose them all, but these are ones that I think showed our overall unit of study.

Mrs. Pitts' Sample: This is an example of a shape poem that I wrote to model for students. I based it off of the shape poems that we saw in the book Come to My Party. I also talked with students about how the topic for your poem could be something you really liked or knew a lot about just like when writing a story.

Kalie's Sample: Kalie decided to her shape poems based on Come to My Party. She made her topic winter and decided to do a lot of small shape poems on one page. She also noticed how sometimes poets stretch out words and tried that with covvvvvvver.

Kara's Sample: Kara was inspired to write an acrostic poem about baseball after we read the book Silver Seeds. I conferenced with her and we decided to make the word baseball in a different color so that people could easily see that it is an acrostic.

Zion's Sample: After reading Hailstones and Halibut Bones and Yellow Elephant I asked students to try to write a poem about colors. Zion is a relucant writer and I was so surprised by this poem. It even rhymed!

Megan's Sample: Megan is a talented writer. She can naturally write poetry and can also write songs that have their own tune. This is a poem she wrote after we had done immersion and she was just playing around with poetry. She did not choose to publish this one, but I loved it and wanted to include it. She noticed that poems use sound words and she attempted that in her poem. It got cut off when scanning, so here it is typed:

My Words in a Song

I like my words in a song like boom boom

chrash chrash thump thump boo boo

I make these. These are the nousis when I get home. 

Teacher Reflection: For my unit of study I decided to do poetry. I think that this unit went really well! I tried letting students look through the books and mark something cool they noticed with a sticky note. They all love to read those books during quiet reading time and during writing when they need a reference. I really had a hard time narrowing down the books to use for a close study. I felt like they were all so good and poetry can be very broad. That is something that I want to work on changing more for the next time I teach it. I feel like all of my students were not afraid to attempt writing poetry. I don't know if it's because it can be short or if they just naturally enjoy it. They all wrote poetry on their own without being pushed and many of them ended up working together on poetry books.