Playing with Poetry

This curriculum unit uses short, high-interest poems to teach reading skills and to engage students in reading. Young readers need to develop technical skills for reading, such as phonemic awareness, phonics, a high frequency word vocabulary, and fluency. These technical skills are all addressed in the curriculum. However, without a strong interest in reading and a basis for understanding what they read, students have little chance of growing into strong life-long readers. I hope to engage students in the humor and sensitivity of high-interest texts so that they can be utilized to teach reading skills. In addition, I hope that by exposing students to writing they will find humorous and that they can relate to will spark an interest in reading so that they read more than they are required to in school.

This unit is intended for English language learners in grades 1 and 2 who generally need more time and support to learn how to read and, especially, to comprehend what they read. It also addresses the vocabulary needs of young students learning English.

This unit is especially geared toward the students who are below grade-level in reading and who are making very slow progress. These are students who require intervention above the standard reading instruction. In addition, this unit is intended to help motivate the students who experience frustration and discouragement in reading.