The Poetry Café is Open, by Kovalcik & Certo
The teachers wanted to implement a poetry café, where students would read aloud poems they had written to their peers, parents, and teachers. In order to do this, the teacher incorporated poetry minilessons into Writer’s Workshop. Each minilesson began with a poetry read-aloud to show students the power of language. Then, each minilesson focused on a different aspect of poetry: descriptive clolor, rhyming, repetition, alliteration, onomatopoeia (exploring sound words), and collaboration. At the end of their poetry unit, the class transformed their classroom into a hip coffee house and parents were invited to the classroom to listen to poetry and read through their child’s poetry journal. The big idea I took from this article is that poetry café is meant to move children away from focusing on mechanics (spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and handwriting) and get students more concerned with the overall message of their writing.
I know that my mentor teacher has implemented a poetry café into her classroom in previous years and I would love to see it used again this year. I think that, like the teacher in the article, the poetry café could fit into our Writer’s Workshop (as there is actually a poetry unit included). It enriches writing instruction by helping students to use more descriptive language and focus on sensory imagery (things which my mentor teacher tells students “fancy up” their writing). Additionally, I think that giving students the opportunity to present their poetry shows them how important writing is (plus, it’s fun)!
To use poetry café with my students, I feel that I would need to learn more about creating a comfortable and safe classroom environment where students feel completely comfortable sharing their writing and are respectful and supportive of one another. This aspect is vital for the success of the poetry café.
Finally, after reading through this module I feel that I got a lot out of the assessment portion. I generally think of assessments as formal tests given to students, but this is merely one small aspect of what assessments are. They are simply meant to “gather information about what students know and are able to do,” as it stated in the assessment powerpoint. As I move forward with my unit development, I see myself using mostly informal assessments, as my target instruction areas involve mainly whole-group discussion-type lessons. Specifically, I hope to assess work samples, take observation notes, and conference with individual or small groups of students.
After reading about this article you chose to read, I really like the idea of a poetry café. This of course I would find difficult in the first grade, but would love to see it implemented across all grades. I like your big idea about the article. I find it important to get students to move away from focusing on mechanics and to become more aware and concerned with the overall message of their writing. Once your teacher implements a poetry café in your classroom, if she does, I would like to see it or hear about how she does it! Especially being that it is a first grade classroom! Our writer’s workshop also includes a poetry unit, and we read a poem at the start of our shared reading time everyday, so our students are definitely exposed to poetry! Actually, thinking about this more, I feel that my teacher might also do some poetry café activity too. This is something that I will have to ask her about! Our students already all LOVE to share their work and are encouraged to do so on a regular basis. To share in front of multiple parents would be something that we would have to insure that the students are comfortable with doing. Poetry café is a great way to expose students to all different genres of writing which I find very important, especially with lower grade levels. Students might not enjoy writing narratives and informational pieces so their attitude toward writing might be negative. But with these other writing genres such as poetry, their attitudes might be much more positive!
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