A Celebration of Words
By Nile Stanley

We all know that developing a love of language helps children become successful readers and writers, and we know that one way to teach children to love words is to introduce them to poetry. Sallye B. Mathis Elementary School, a challenged urban school in Jacksonville, FL, is full of children who love words because they love poetry. You'll hear students performing poetry on the morning TV announcements and see interns in the classrooms teaching literacy through poetry lessons.

The Poetry Stars, the school's performance troupe, entertain their classmates and people outside the school as well, at teacher conferences, senior citizen luncheons and internationally through an online poetry club. Guests have included poets Brod Bagert and Karen Alexander and Alaskan storyteller Brett Dillingham. I have a dual role. At Sallye B. Mathis, I'm a performance poet for the school and at University of North Florida, I'm a reading education professor.

The Poetry Stars put on a show for their poetry-loving classmates.

Reading and performing poetry provide numerous opportunities for children to practice – with pleasure – the essential skills of phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. Additionally, children who perform poetry aloud learn to write poetry in a certain "voice." Other benefits of performing poetry include increased self-esteem and connectedness to community and culture.

Skill-building activities. Children in preK through grade three can get practice in word recognition by performing actions along with a poem, such as the ones in roman type below.

A student teacher acts out the poem "Weather," complete with props.

Weather
by Anonymous

Whether the weather be fine, (put on sunglasses, smile)
Or whether the weather be not, (remove sunglasses, frown)
Whether the weather be cold, (put on coat)
Or whether the weather be hot, (remove coat, wipe sweat from brow)
We'll weather the weather,
Whatever the weather, (open an umbrella)
Whether we like it or not. (walk off happily, twirling umbrella)

I start by performing the poem and motions for the class as they listen without looking at the text. Next, I read the poem to the children and have them echo-chant it line by line. Then they follow along while I point to the poem line by line on a wall chart. After that, we perform the poem together, with the children mimicking the actions and repeating the lines.

Beyond the lines. There are many other things I do to build literacy skills after the children learn this poem, including:

• Play a matching game in which students pantomime actions that correspond to each line the teacher reads aloud.
• Students integrate the key words "weather" and "whether" into their sight vocabularies by matching sticky-note copies of the words with the text.
• Students can use the Rebus Rhymes website (www.enchantedlearning.com/Rhymes.html) to get visual clues for reading the poem and nursery rhymes independently.
• Target the sounds of "w" in "weather" and "wh" in "whether." Can students hear the difference? Have them brainstorm a list of "w" words and "wh" words and add correctly-spelled "w" and "wh" sight words to a word wall.
• Write sight word phrases from the poem on sticky-notes (e.g., weather be hot, weather be cold). Have children act out the phrase to see if the rest of the class can correctly guess and orally match the phrase.
• Play tongue twister by reading the poem rapidly. Write tongue twisters using the target sound "w" (e.g., Wee Willy Worm wants watermelon!)
• Develop meaning, vocabulary, and concepts by reading and discussing other weather-related poems.

Online publishing. Children like to write original poetry and perform before others. They want their work to be noticed; that was one of the reasons I started the Climbing the Poet-Tree Website, www.unf.edu/~nstanley/climb.htm where students can publish their poems and video clips of their performances online. Here's one of their poems:

Power of Reading (a rap)
by Cora Royal-Hackley and her class,
Sallye B. Mathis Elementary, Jacksonville, FL

Reading gives you power; reading gives you knowledge.
Knowing how to read prepares you for college.
The more you read, the more you learn.
This has an effect on what you earn.

So read! read! read!

The power of reading, as described it in the children's poem, can put a hold on students when we instill a love of language within them. Poetry offers lots for them to fall in love with, while honing their language skills as well.

Nile Stanley is an Associate Professor of Primary and Elementary Education at the University of North Florida.