Over the course of the past few weeks, I have been creating a poetry unit for kindergarteners (which I will post later) with a few of my peers. We focused on using repetition and sound words. This week, I even had the opportunity to teach it! The children did an amazing job writing poems, and I am excited to share! For this post, I want to give you a glimpse of one day and how it went. On this day, we focused on sound words. The students really enjoyed having the opportunity to split up into groups and create poems about things they heard outside. I want to share with you my relfection from this day and show you some shared writing from two of the groups.
Reflection:
Today, we focused on sound words in poetry, and I feel that it was much more successful than day one. The students were more engaged and much more excited to hear what we had to say. I think it helped that we began by telling them we had a surprise for them after reading poetry. It also helped that they all had brought stuffed animals to school for their ABCs of kindergarten countdown and were able to bring them out for the animal poem we had chosen.
After reading the poems for the day, Cassie modeled how to write a poem using sounds. The students were attentive, and it could be seen on some of their faces that they were kind of taking in the concept that they could write just sounds. When they heard that we would be splitting up into groups and going outside to listen for sounds and to write in groups, they actually seemed a bit excited. I had a group of three students. I think that taking them outside was great, but I could have been a bit more strategic. There were quite a few kids outside playing. I tried to take them around the corner where it would be less distracting, but the kids in my classroom were outside and kept coming over to see what was happening. It was awesome that they got to be part of the lesson, but my three students that were in my group were pretty distracted by this. Especially one who really wanted to go play. While listening for sounds, my students struggled a bit to make sounds. Instead of making the sounds, they would tell me what they had heard. For example, one of the students in my class jumped on the pavement. One of the children in my group said that they heard feet, but the group struggled to give it a sounds word. However, the group seemed to have less trouble with this when they were working on their independent writing. I am unsure as to whether it was the distractions or a miscommunication when we were outside.
Through this lesson, I have learned that my students really are more capable than I sometimes give them credit for. For example, I was worried that we would go outside and my students would struggle to come up with sounds. However, they came up with multiple examples that I had not even thought of. I also saw where it is extremely helpful to give them something to look forward to and something they enjoy in the lesson. Going outside seemed to help my students think of this activity less as work and more as something that could be entertaining.
I plan to use this lesson again in the future. However, I may do it a bit different with the grouping. We were fortunate enough to have four teachers. That will probably not be the case in the future. Therefore, this may be done as a whole group activity or with the class divided in half. The small groups helped in ensuring that all students participated but could be difficult to achieve in the future. I would also change the way I word my question to students about what they heard. I found that I kept saying “What do you hear?” My students would answer by giving a direct answer. I then asked them to “Make the sound you hear.” They were more successful here.
Overall, I would say that this lesson was successful. As always, there are many areas for improvement, but the students seemed to enjoy what we had to share with them and there were even some who were excited to write independently. Hopefully, this trend will continue and by the end of the week all students will be excited to write.
I hope you enjoyed this preview into my poetry unit, and I cannot wait to share more soon!
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