Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son: reading while having fun.

Oh, the power of poetry! Not only can poetry affect the soul and raise it to new heights, create shivers with a perfectly phrased description, or heal jangled nerves through the gentle rhythm and sounds of alliteration and rhyme, it also can be a driving force in leading emergent readers into the wondrous world of reading. A mere five or six lines, not an intimidating amount to most 1st-grade children, can encompass an entire thought or story. Reluctant or slower readers can experience success by simply reading a poem.

Poetry enables students to work with an integrated array of language arts skills. Through poetry, students are exposed to new vocabulary words from a multitude of themes. Words are learned in context, yet can be singled out and examined like rare gems when the need arises, or when phonemes and prior phonics instruction come together. Most of all, poetry is fun to read aloud, fun to hear, fun to write, and fun to share.

The Challenge: Helping Young Children Who Consider Themselves Failures

Last year, my 1st-grade class, in a small town in northern Mississippi, had only 20 students. Of these 20 students, 11 had been retained in the 1st grade; two other students had been recommended for retention in kindergarten. The diversity among these children was tremendous, with great ranges in physical size, academic achievement, attitudes toward self and school, and age. The students who had been retained regarded themselves as "failures." They constantly needed reassurance that they were succeeding. They demanded graded work so they could track their own progress. "When are we going to do work?" was a constant refrain when students were occupied at centers. During special center time, when the children could choose from among a variety of art activities, games, and books, many liked to work on discarded worksheets that were a part of the play-school center. I made it a point to grade each paper liberally, using stickers, happy faces, and short personal notes. My students needed such tangible assurances that they were learning.

How could I plan a curriculum that would meet the needs of all my students? One of the most successful ways I found to provide opportunities for success in reading was through the use of children's poems. I didn't plan elaborate lessons; I just let the children choose the poems they wanted to learn, and let them manipulate the poems through reading, speaking, writing, acting, visualizing, and illustrating. Poetry, selected for its brevity, bridged the differences among my students. Lesser-known, multisyllabic words and a varied syntax fed the needs of my advanced students, while smaller, high-frequency, and phonetically stable words led my slower students on the path to building a rudimentary reading vocabulary. For example, in Shel Silverstein's poem "Hat" (1974), the hat is a toilet plunger. Although the words "toilet" and "plunger" were not part of our 1st-grade reading vocabulary, they contained one- and two-letter phonemes that we had been studying ("oi," "er," and the soft sound for "g"). In addition, the poem contained an example of a contraction, substituting "'s" for "is" in the word "heck's."

My students were primarily from low socioeconomic backgrounds and differed from more affluent students in the quality and quantity of experiences that would support emerging literacy. With few exceptions, my students came from single-parent homes, or lived with an aunt or grandmother. All but two received free breakfasts and free lunches on a daily basis at school. Commensurate with the poverty and unstable living conditions of my students was a paucity of experiences that supported their readiness for school. Travel, day trips to a local aquarium or zoo, art, and reading were uniformly lacking from most of my students' lives. The singsong lyrical quality of nursery rhymes was unfamiliar to many. In addition to providing quick and successful reading experiences, poetry helped to fill this void. By reading and listening to poetry, students experienced the joy of hearing enchanting and glorious words woven through whimsical stories about other children from other places and other times. Feelings of fantasy, goodness, and playfulness may have replaced, even temporarily, some of the harsh realities in my children's lives. For a little while, they were children delighting in fanciful vignettes created especially for children.

A wealth of poems is available to teachers; it is fun and simple to find ones that meet the individual needs of students. I relied heavily on poems by Shel Silverstein and from poetry anthologies from the library. I wanted to use humorous little ditties that would immediately catch my students' imagination and attention. Shel Silverstein's poem "Hat" was an instant hit with my students; after learning it, they were eager to read and learn other poems. My students appeared surprised and pleased that I would include a poem with the word "toilet." During the first few readings, the word "toilet" triggered, suppressed smiles and giggles--I had their interest and attention!

Easy Steps for Reading Success

Before the lesson, I copied a poem on a large piece of chart paper. Often, I posted two or three poems on the wall and let the students vote on the one they wanted to read. First, I read the poem to the class; we savored the tones and patterns of the language read aloud, and delighted in the brief story expressed in the poem. The children and I took turns reading the poem, using different expressions and rates of reading, pausing for dramatic effect, and reading rapidly or slowly to infuse and emphasize meaning. We engaged in all manner of oral reading combinations, including choral, duet, and individual reading. We used pantomime style movements to act out the words in the poem. After "playing" with the written and oral aspects of the poem, we discussed its meaning and words. Children were asked to summarize the poem, describe their feelings about the poem, and identify and read their favorite word or words from the poem. We found words in the poem that matched words we had been studying, discussed the meaning of unfamiliar words, and looked for rhyming words, phonemes, and contractions. The possibilities for word exploration seem to be almost limitless.

After we learned, analyzed, and discussed the poem, the children broke up into small groups to write and illustrate the poem in their poetry notebooks; they then shared it with others in their group. When the children completed the work in their poetry journals, I posted the chart with the poem in a prominent place on a wall in the classroom. I made sure the poem was low enough for the children to read easily. I provided pointers (inexpensive rulers), and asked one child to become the teacher and point to the lines of the poem as two or three other children read aloud. This became one of the children's favorite reading activities. They were eager to read our poems to any visitor who came near our classroom. "Look what we can read! Come here!" A small group of my students literally pulled unsuspecting visitors toward the charts of poems. In this way, poems were read to the principal, the very popular custodian, teaching assistants, the speech therapist, teachers, students from other classrooms, and parents. After a slight tussle to determine who would get to move the ruler under the words as they were read, the poem was enthusiastically read in ever-increasing volume as each child tried to be heard over the others. After one poem was read, the children dashed to the next chart, where the whole process began again. If the hapless visitor was willing to hear more, or unable to free himself or herself, this small band of children would encircle the room with visitor in tow, reading every single poetry chart.

Extensions of a Simple Idea

Our focus on poetry provided students at all levels with reading activities that stimulated their interest. I continue to find new ideas for expanding this poetry program. One 1st-grade teacher writes poems on window shades, which she has hung around her classroom. Because children are so eager to read their poems to others, it would be fun to have a poetry party where children from other classes could come to hear the children read and share poetry with them. The all-important parent connection could be nurtured by having a poetry program for parents.

The success of our ,poetry lessons came from the simple joy of reading and sharing poems. The poetry charts helped me towards my goal of creating a print-rich classroom that contained material my children wanted to read. As our collection of poems grew, the students' reading vocabulary grew. The children began finding poems in books from the classroom library and in their reading books. I loved it when they said, "Look! I found a poem. Can I write it in my poetry book?" I was delighted; my children were not only learning new vocabulary words and developing a joy of reading, but also becoming independent, self-motivated learners.

Suggested Readings

Cole, J., & Calmenson, S. (1995). Ready ... set ... read--and laugh!: A funny treasury for beginning readers. New York: Delacorte Press.

Prelutsky, J. (1983). The Random House book of poetry for children. New York: Random House.

Silverstein, S. (1974). Where the sidewalk ends: The poems and drawings of Shel Silverstein. New York: HarperCollins Children's Books.

Kerry Holmes is Assistant Professor, School of Education, University of Mississippi, University, Mississippi.