Sarah Hais - Teacher Inquiry Workshop: Teaching Children to Write Poetry

Saturday April 26th - afternoon


Sarah introduced the Summer Institute fellows to the unit she teaches 2nd graders poetry. She explained how her students were asking for opportunities to engage in "Show and Tell" as they had done in kindergarten. She united teaching children how to write poetry with an element of students showing and telling with each other their own experiences. She found a way for her students to bring in an artifact to show, tell and write poetry about.

The procedure starts with a guess box- a cardboard box of medium to large size that a student can place their artifact in as the rest of the students ask thoughtful and specific questions. Through their questioning, they are able to define the characteristics of the object in the box. When the object is revealed, the students then write a poem about it. The students find writing the poem to be a simple task, due to the fact that they have already defined the object and described it. The class is then able to pull ideas from the list of answers (from the questions) to add to the poem. The single guideline Sarah holds her students to: that the poem should be written in lines, and that the lines don't have to be written in complete sentences.

As the unit unfolds, Sarah gives her students opportunities to read, discuss, and respond to poetry. Using poems by famous authors such as Rossettii, Sandburg, and Hughes. The students are introduced to poetic techniques, such as alliteration, repetition, onomatopoeia, personification, sensory images, metaphors, and similes.

Before orientation, the facilitators of the Maryland Writing Project had asked the fellows to bring in one personal artifact that had a special meaning to us. These artifacts were vital to participating in Sarah's Teacher Inquiry Workshop.

Sarah's workshop started with a guess box and an object that had personal meaning to Sarah inside. She then asked the fellows to generate questions about the object. We worked out the characteristics and ultimately found the item to be a hydrangea plant, similar to the flowers of the bouquet she was going to carry in her upcoming wedding.

Once the object was identified, the fellows shared ideas, descriptions, details, colors, shapes, designs of hydrangea and we compiled lists of these traits. Then, the fellows were divided into groups of 4-5 people, each group sitting around a table. Each table was then designated as one of the poetic techniques: alliteration, repetition, onomatopoeia, personification, metaphor and simile. The groups were given a poem that used their poetic technique and was then asked to create a poem about an artifact belonging to a member of the group.

I have been asked to reproduce the poems each group of fellows created. Enjoy!