Poetry Notebooks

When we work with poetry, students work with concepts of print and spelling patterns.

Punctuation Marks. . .

Challenge students to find the punctuation marks.  Circle periods, question marks, and exclamation points in red.  Red means “STOP” and these marks STOP a sentence.  Discuss what each punctuation mark means.  Learn their names.  We also highlight commas, as well as learn their name and function.  We practice “taking a breath” when we read our poem/rhyme/chant/song – – whenever a comma is present.  For quotation marks, we highlight them with blue or some other color that is different than red and yellow.  We practice naming quotation marks and learning their function.  We try to stay away from calling quotation marks “talking marks” – – although the children learn both names.

Sight Words. . .

Challenge students to find the sight words within the text.  We highlight or circle them with green or blue.  Caution students to not get sloppy when working with the text.  Over zealous students tend to color the words too hard and have been known to color right through their paper or make the word so dark that it we can’t read it after it was colored!

Read, Read, and Read. . .

Students benefit from repeated readings.  Mix up the way that a poem is read by asking students to:

• choral read the text

• dramatize the text

Guess the Covered Word . .

Play “Guess the Covered Word” during the initial read through of the poem/chant/rhyme/song.

Tools of the Trade. . .

Spice up your shared reading lessons by using various tools of the trade!

• Wikki Stix

• Pointers

• Highlighter Tape

• Post It Notes

• Reading Glasses – – funky reading glasses/sunglasses for a “guest read through”

Poetry Notebook Materials

Students use markers, color pencils, highlighters, or crayons to circle high frequency words and identify punctuation.  We go through a lot of glue sticks, as it is our preferred type of adhesive when adding poetry to our notebooks.  We have had poetry notebooks using 3-pronged folders, 3-pronged binders, and notebooks.  My preferred method is to use 3-pronged binders.  Students either used page protectors, or used a 3-hole punch to add their poetry to the binder.