the big book of classroom poems

BY K ATHLEEN M. HOLLENBECK NEW YORK • TORONTO • LONDON • AUCKLAND • SYDNEY MEXICO CITY • NEW DELHI • HONG KONG • BUENOS AIRES The Big Book of Classroom Poems © Kathleen M. Hollenbeck, Published by Scholastic Teaching Resources Scholastic Inc. grants teachers permission to photocopy the poetry pages and activity page from this book for classroom use. No other part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012-3999. Front cover and interior design by Kathy Massaro Cover art by Katherine Lucas Interior illustrations by Dawn Apperly, Mike Gordon, James Graham Hale, Mark Hicks, and Bari Weissman ISBN 0-439-43826-8 Copyright © 2004 by Kathleen M. Hollenbeck Published by Scholastic Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 40 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 To a place of darkness few may understand, comes a firm assurance and a gentle hand. Guided by such efforts, ground so kindly tilled reaps the joyous harvest of a dream fulfilled. o Sarah Morry, Dr. Robert Legare, Reverend Michael Menna, Dr. Dana Chofay, and Dr. Maureen Chung with gratitude for your wisdom, commitment, and compassion. Thank you. T % % The Big Book of Classroom Poems © Kathleen M. Hollenbeck, Published by Scholastic Teaching Resources Introduction 6 Why Use Poetry? 6 Ways to Use Poems in the Classroom 7 School Days • 13 School Supplies 13 Deep in My Desk 13 Classroom Helper 14 The Substitute Teacher 15 Fire Drill 16 Open House 17 On the Move 17 Hoping for a Snow Day 18 Indoor Recess 18 The Hall 19 Seating Trouble 2 0 My Lunch Box 21 Blowing a Bubble 21 What Makes a Winner? 22 Checking My Work 23 Language Arts • 24 Alphabet Poems 24 Word Family Poems 37 Five Vowels 51 Person, Place, or Thing? 52 Verbs 52 Adjectives 52 Pronoun Play 53 Seaside Homonyms 53 Just Alike (Synonyms) 54 Outside Antonyms 54 More Than One (Plurals) 55 Whose Is It? (Possessives) 56 Outdoor Bedtime (Compound Words) 56 Understanding Idioms 57 A Question of Rhyme (Writing a Poem) 58 Paper Talk (Writing a Letter) 59 Filling in the Blanks (Writing a Story) 6 0 Story Trail (Reading) 61 Math • 62 New Crayons (Counting) 62 Window Math (Counting) 63 The Candy Store Lady (Counting) 64 Number Families (Addition & Subtraction) 65 Schoolroom Shapes 65 Same or Different? (Attributes) 66 Who’s Next? (Patterns) 67 Sneakers in Line (Patterns) 68 How Many? (Estimation) 69 Time Trouble 7 0 What Time Is It? 7 0 How Tall? (Measuring Height) 71 Pet Pounds (Measuring Weight) 71 How Long? (Measuring Length) 72 Overflow (Measuring Volume) 72 Thermometer (Measuring Temperature) 73 Times Tables (Multiplication) 74 Cupcake Math (Division) 75 The Arts • 76 The Color Club 76 Star 77 Free to Draw 77 A Sticky Situation 78 My Painting 79 Pictures of Life 79 Collage 8 0 Clay 8 0 Musical Muse 81 A World on Stage 82 C o n t e n t s The Big Book of Classroom Poems © Kathleen M. Hollenbeck, Published by Scholastic Teaching Resources Winter Sleep 1 0 4 At the Zoo 1 0 5 Where Do I Live? 1 0 6 City Creatures 1 0 8 What Animal Am I? 1 0 9 Peek Into the Pond 11 0 Frog 111 Creepy Crawlies Busy Bee 112 Bzzzz! 112 Ladybug 112 The Song of a House Fly 113 Why, Fly? 113 Night Visitor 114 Fireflies 114 Fuzzy Fellow 115 Monarch Migration 115 Ants 116 Intersection Insects 116 Spider 117 Earthworm 117 Plants & Seeds The Seed 118 Sidewalk Sprout 119 Garden Flower 12 0 Inside a Tree 121 Tree Roots 122 My Apple Tree 123 Pine Tree 124 The Oldest Tree 125 The Seasons: Autumn Autumn Wind 126 Autumn in the Park 127 Harvest Rainbow 127 Pumpkin Possibilities 128 Apple Treats 128 Hayride 129 Scarecrow 129 Science • 83 Health & Safety Messy Hands 83 The Magic Bar of Soap 84 My Loose Tooth 85 Crocodile Smile 86 Bike Safety Rule Riddles 87 My Body 88 My Five Senses 89 Weather City Sky 9 0 My Place in the Clouds 91 Fog 91 Summer Storm 92 Rain Beat 93 Raindrops 93 Gray Days 94 Hail 95 Water and Ice 95 Energy & Conservation Electricity 96 Save a Little Water 97 One Won’t Make a Difference 97 Recycle 98 Second Chance 98 Sun, Moon & Beyond The Sun 99 The Moon 99 Moon Glow 1 00 Stars Sparkle 1 00 Planet Panic 1 0 1 Animals & Habitats Animal Babies 1 0 2 Animals of the Air 1 0 3 Animals of the Land 1 0 3 Animals of the Sea 1 0 3 Animal Homes 1 0 4 The Big Book of Classroom Poems © Kathleen M. Hollenbeck, Published by Scholastic Teaching Resources The Seasons: Winter Snowflakes 13 0 Tasting Snowflakes 13 0 Winter Haiku 131 Frost 132 My Bed in Winter 132 Mittens, Hat, or Boots 133 Snow Sculptures 133 Winter Storm 134 Winter Wind 134 The Seasons: Spring Signs of Spring 135 The Coming of Spring 135 Tiny Buds 136 First Flowers 136 Grass 137 Picnic in the Park 137 The Seasons: Summer Summer Day 138 Feet Feelings 139 Summer Sports 139 Beach Day 14 0 Shells 141 Sand Sculptures 141 Moonlight, Summer Night 142 Social Studies • 143 Feelings & Fears All About Us 143 My Teddy 144 Scary Things 144 A Friend for Me 145 Caring & Cooperation Two Words 146 Listening Ears 147 Being Kind 148 Showing Respect 149 What Does It Mean to Be Responsible? 15 0 Sharing 15 0 Cooperation 151 Peace 151 Neighborhood & Community Who Makes Up a Family? 152 Home 152 Getting Around 153 Subway 154 Where Will I Go? 155 Who Am I? 156 United States 157 What Symbol Am I? 158 Where in the World Am I? 159 Holidays & Special Days Chinese New Year 16 0 Martin Luther King, Jr. 161 Groundhog Day 162 Valentine’s Day 163 The 1 00 th Day 164 Celebrate! (Black History Month) 165 Mr. Lincoln (Presidents ’ Day) 166 History’s Women 167 April Fool’s Day 168 It’s Earth Day! 169 A Time to Remember (Memorial Day) 17 0 Hurrah for the Fourth of July! 171 Halloween Party 172 Spooky Things 172 Election Day 173 Veterans Day 173 Thankful 174 Lights of Winter Darkness (Winter Holidays) 175 Birthdays by Number 176 Candles 176 The Big Book of Classroom Poems © Kathleen M. Hollenbeck, Published by Scholastic Teaching Resources W hen I was eight years old, I wrote a poem for a third-grade language assignment. While not an amazing piece of literature, that poem became important to me. Its creation marked the exact moment my passion for words came alive and proved the spark that ignited a lifelong devotion to writing. Today in your classroom, you have the opportunity to spark in your students feelings of enthusiasm, excitement, comfort, and compassion. You can foster a love of words, guide students in recognizing meter and rhyme, strengthen their reading skills, and broaden their awareness of the world around them . . . all through the use of poetry. Inside this book, you’ll find more than 240 fun, easy-to-read poems, each linked with a learning element from the primary curriculum and designed to appeal to students in kindergarten through grade 3. Often written from a child’s point of view, the poems entertain and inspire, probe and present, ask and apply. As you share the poems with students, you’ll tickle your tongues and weave your way through a maze of verse that touches on hundreds of subjects familiar and important to young minds. You’ll flit with a housefly, absorb the essence of the four seasons, and meet word families up close. Poems dealing with key topics in language arts, math, science, social studies, character development, and the arts fill these pages. Open this book and step in to discover that poetry in line with the needs and interests of its audience can expand the experience of language, and any topic under the sun—or even around it! Why Use Poetry? { Poetry Tells It Like It Is. Poems cover every topic imaginable, in depth or on the surface. Meant to explore and explain, poems can make difficult subjects easy to understand and the obvious even more so. { Poems Come in All Shapes and Sizes—Literally! From haiku to ballad, they vary in length and depth. They can be three lines or thirty-three, providing abundant detail or just a bit. { Poetry Builds Reading Fluency. Poetry offers endless opportunities to practice key aspects of fluency such as phrasing, intonation, punctuation, and vocabulary. Many poems carry a lyrical, sometimes predictable rhythm that practically rolls off the tongue, making them fun to read aloud, pleasant to hear, and easy to follow along. { There’s a Poem for Everyone. While not every poem will appeal to every reader, somewhere, somehow, every reader who seeks will most certainly find at least one that grabs his attention or tickles her funny bone. 6 Introduction The Big Book of Classroom Poems © Kathleen M. Hollenbeck, Published by Scholastic Teaching Resources { Poetry Waltzes With Words. Within the walls of a poem exist opportunities to examine the use of phonics, parts of speech, alliteration, metaphor, patterning, meter, placement, rhyme, and a host of other lingual elements. { Poetry Strengthens Communication Skills. As students share poetry, they can’t help but bolster skills in reading, listening, and speaking. Ways to Use Poems in the Classroom Poetry, by its very nature, begs to be shared, and there are dozens of ways to do that in the classroom. Look over the suggestions below and choose the ones that will appeal most to you and your students. { Read Aloud Often. Read poems aloud, and have students read to you. You can gauge their comprehension by observing how they recite. Do they use appropriate expression? Is their timing on track? Do they pick up on the meter and potential rhyme scheme of the poem? { Enjoy Rather Than Analyze. In the primary grades, cultivating a love of literature and poetry holds more importance than focusing on mechanics. As much as possible, help students notice and appreciate poetry for the way it sounds, the images it depicts, and the emotion it conveys. { Where’s the Rhyme? Explore the use of different rhyme schemes, as in “How Many?” (page 69), “Hail” (page 95), “My Apple Tree” (page 123), and “Mittens, Hat, or Boots” (page 133). Discuss the idea that rhyming poems do not always employ the same rhyme scheme; the rhyme can come at the end of a line, in the middle of a sentence, or any place where the poet feels it best serves the sound and the course of the poem. 7 Teachers reach for poetry, and lessons come alive, illuminating history and how to count to five, describing common feelings or sharing silly tales, identifying elephants, exploring ants and whales. No matter what the topic, how stately or absurd, when teachers reach for poetry, they know they will be heard. The Big Book of Classroom Poems © Kathleen M. Hollenbeck, Published by Scholastic Teaching Resources { Plan a Pocket Chart. As a teacher of young children, you know well that poetry and pocket charts go hand in hand. Many of the poems in this book are perfect for pocket charts. Write each line of a selected poem on a tagboard strip, and place the lines in order in your pocket chart. Then: ◆ Match Missing Portions of the Poem. Cover the animal baby names in the poem “Animal Babies” (page 102). Write the name of each animal baby on its own strip of tagboard, and have students match the name of each baby to its mother. ◆ Reach for Riddles. On small strips of tagboard, write or draw the answers to riddles such as those in “Peek Into the Pond” (page 110). Invite students to place each animal or insect with the riddle that describes it. ◆ Make a Rebus.Turn any poem into a rebus by replacing—or asking students to replace—specific words of the poem with pictures. The poem “Outside Antonyms” (page 54) offers nearly a dozen rebus opportunities. { Up With Acrostics! Invite students to model a poem or two after the language poems “Person, Place, or Thing?” and “Verbs” (page 52), or “Ants” (page 116), which are acrostics. Students can create acrostics (poems in which the first letter of each line combine to spell a word vertically) using virtually any noun in the English language as the subject, including their own names. { Try Tongue Twisters. Many of the poems in the alphabet section of this book can be used as tongue twisters. Invite students to select words from the poems— or any words they like—to make their own tongue twisters for classmates to recite. Looking for one to get you started? Try “The Letter F” (page 26). { Sound It Out! Inspire students to write poems describing the sounds they hear in real life. The hissssss of a whistling teapot and the whhhooo of a cold winter wind bring winter to mind. { Make a Mobile. Use a poem as the model for a mobile your students can make and hang in the classroom. Choose a poem that describes a variety of items, such as “Planet Panic” (page 101), which names the nine planets and tells fictitious tales about them. Have students cut and color tagboard circles to represent the planets and the sun. Using string, suspend these at different lengths from a clothes hanger. (Hang the planets in order according to their distance from the sun.) On each planet, have students glue a conversation bubble that tells what the planet might have said to express the way it felt in the poem. 8 The Big Book of Classroom Poems © Kathleen M. Hollenbeck, Published by Scholastic Teaching Resources { Try Haiku and Tanka. Haiku offers children a way to write without trying to rhyme or arrange words on the page. In haiku, writers determine word choice and placement according to the number of syllables per line. Haiku usually involves reference to nature and contains the syllable pattern 5-7-5 (5 in the first line, 7 in the second line, 5 in the last). Explore this poetry form with “The Sun” and “The Moon” (page 99) and “Winter in the Park” and “Smooth” (page 131). Tanka, similar to haiku but longer in length, often follows a similar syllable pattern: 5-7-5-7-7. Examples of tanka include “Raindrops” (page 93), “Recycle” (page 98), and “Winter Storm” (page 134). { Create a Poetry Wreath. Cut 4-inch shapes of any kind (stars, circles, pumpkins, and so on) from sturdy construction paper. Cut the center circle from a 9-inch paper plate, and use the outside as the base of a poetry wreath. Have students copy the lines or verses of a poem onto different shapes. Then help them glue or staple the shapes onto the wreath, placing them in order (clockwise) to duplicate the original poem. { Put Poems on Display. Write the verses of a poem on any shape that fits with your classroom motif, and post it on a wall at students’ eye level. For example, you might write verses on a string of railroad cars, a group of ducklings following their mother, or a bunch of balloons in the sky. { Use Poems for Movement. “At the Zoo” (page 105) calls for creative movement, with instructions alongside the poem. Ask students to act out other poems as well, dramatizing poems such as “Seating Trouble” (page 20) and “Checking My Work” (page 23). { Bring Imagery to Life. The poem “Scarecrow” (page 129) describes a simple, homemade scarecrow in a field. Provide craft sticks, fabric swatches, glue, and yarn, and direct students to make the scarecrow they envisioned as they listened to the poem. You might also want to provide chalk for them to recreate the swirls and designs described in “Frost” (page 132) or clay to recreate some of the animals named in the poems on page 103. { Paint Poetry Placemats. Reproduce a poem and ask students to illustrate it, using colorful markers or crayons. Laminate each student’s page to make a placemat for snack time. 9 The Big Book of Classroom Poems © Kathleen M. Hollenbeck, Published by Scholastic Teaching Resources { Make a Poetry Cube. Photocopy the reproducible “Make a Poetry Cube” (page 12) and distribute it to students. Have them write each line (or verse, depending on the length of the selection) on one square of the cube, beginning at square number 1. Then fold up the cube as directed, tape in place, and turn it to recite the poem. { Post a Poem-of-the-Day. Choose a poem a day to write on the chalkboard near the day’s assignments. Incorporate the poem into your morning routine, just as you may already do with the hot lunch count and today’s weather. { Work With Word Families. Write the word family poems (pages 37–50) on chart paper. Invite students to circle the words from each family, replace them with other words from the family wherever possible, and make word family mini-books, bookmarks, and scrapbooks. { Head Out on a Word Hunt! Build word recognition and emphasize parts of speech by setting student detectives on a hunt for specific words in the poems. In “Person, Place, or Thing,” “Verbs,” and “Adjectives” (page 52), have students use highlighters to mark the nouns, verbs, or adjectives they find. In other poems, send them searching for words to add to a thematic word wall (words that describe heroes, have to do with planting, name vehicles, and so on). { Change the Words. Dozens of the poems offer chances to replace nouns, verbs, and adjectives with synonyms or simply other words of the same part of speech. For example, in the poem “Verbs” (page 52), the words eat, rescue, and be can be easily replaced by words such as share, cuddle, and hug. In “Just Alike” (page 54), challenge students to replace one of the synonyms in each line with a word that means the same thing. { Home in on Homonyms and Antonyms. “Seaside Homonyms” (page 53) contains four homonym pairs (pale /pail, to/two, our/hour, and sea/see), but has additional words that have a homonym partner not mentioned. (Examples include we/wee, there/their, not /knot, for/four, and in/inn.) Challenge students to find both the homonym pairs and the would-be homonyms. In “Outside Antonyms” (page 54), have them replace the object of each antonym with a different object that fits with the adjective. For example, instead of The sun is hot. The snow is cold, students might write The stove is hot. The fridge is cold. { Move Into Math. Learning-rich opportunities abound using the math poems in this book. Some suggestions follow: ◆ Extend the counting activity in math poems such as “New Crayons” (page 62) and “Window Math” (page 63) by having students count up the crayons and windows in your classroom. 10 12 Make a Poetry Cube 1 2 3 1 5 6 4 3 2 The Big Book of Classroom Poems Scholastic Teaching Resources The Big Book of Classroom Poems © Kathleen M. Hollenbeck, Published by Scholastic Teaching Resources [...]... the markers and crayons and library books overdue, there is a math book I need right away Yes! There’s the edge of it! Phew! The Big Book of Classroom Poems © Kathleen M Hollenbeck, Published by Scholastic Teaching Resources 13 The Big Book of Classroom Poems © Kathleen M Hollenbeck, Published by Scholastic Teaching Resources S C H O O L D AY S Classroom Helper I want to help What can I do? Erase the. .. each of these words 24 The Big Book of Classroom Poems © Kathleen M Hollenbeck, Published by Scholastic Teaching Resources L A N G U A G E A R T S 3 The Alphabet The Letter Cabin, cactus, comb, and cake show one sound that C can make Camel, cup, and candy bar share the same first sound as car Citrus, circus, and city use the softer side of C In fact, when C is paired with I, the soft sound is the one... up the sky when they all flash together A frog is fairly fond of flies A fawn, afraid, will flee What other words that start with F do you think there might be? 26 The Big Book of Classroom Poems © Kathleen M Hollenbeck, Published by Scholastic Teaching Resources L A N G U A G E A R T S 3 The Alphabet The Letter G makes a hard sound in goldfish and geese, grandmother, garden, and graph G makes a soft... Valentine’s Day 34 The Big Book of Classroom Poems © Kathleen M Hollenbeck, Published by Scholastic Teaching Resources L A N G U A G E A R T S 3 The Alphabet The Letter What will we do when the wind isn’t warm and the weather is cloudy and wet? We’ll watch out the window while ocean waves grow We’ll wonder how big they will get When spring arrives, the winter has ended We know warmer weather’s at hand... is the letter you choose 29 The Big Book of Classroom Poems © Kathleen M Hollenbeck, Published by Scholastic Teaching Resources L A N G U A G E A R T S 3 The Alphabet The Letter Mat and marble, macaroni, mail and meatball, moss and mice These are words that start with M, and each of them is rather nice Movie, monkey, melon, mitten, mound and meadow, minnow, too Even cows can make the M sound, as they... We’ll wander together with boots on our feet and wade where the waves meet the land The Letter I hear the X sound In x-ray and ox, exit, examine, and boxes and fox The word xylophone is surprising to me, for in that word, X makes the same sound as Z! The Big Book of Classroom Poems © Kathleen M Hollenbeck, Published by Scholastic Teaching Resources 35 L A N G U A G E A R T S 3 The Alphabet The Letter Yesterday... as they loudly cry out “M-m-m-OO!!” The Letter Newspaper, noodle, and needle and nest nibble and narrow and name, nighttime and napkin and noodle and nut how are these words all the same? Naptime and nephew and notebook and next, have much in common somehow Each of them starts with the same letter: N Why don’t you try them right now? 30 The Big Book of Classroom Poems © Kathleen M Hollenbeck, Published... spend the night, then pack pajamas, please! The Big Book of Classroom Poems © Kathleen M Hollenbeck, Published by Scholastic Teaching Resources 31 L A N G U A G E A R T S 3 The Alphabet The Letter Quick and quiet, quail and queen, quarter, quilt, and quiz These begin with letter Q That’s the way it is These, along with quack and quit, show that letter Q almost never stands alone It belongs with U The. .. Checkers? Puzzles? Hide -the- Pup? What games do you really like to play? 18 The Big Book of Classroom Poems © Kathleen M Hollenbeck, Published by Scholastic Teaching Resources S C H O O L D AY S The Hall I need to use the bathroom but it isn’t lunch or snack I take the bathroom hall pass and I say I’ll hurry back I step into the hallway, close the door, and look around No one else is out here There is not a... of these are “Yes.” The Big Book of Classroom Poems © Kathleen M Hollenbeck, Published by Scholastic Teaching Resources 23 L A N G U A G E A R T S 3 The Alphabet The Letter A is for acorn and sweet apple pie, attic and angel and arrows that fly A sounds can be long as in ate, ape, and aim, or short as in Annie, which is someone’s name The Letter Baseball, banjo, bed, and better, these words share the . crayons and windows in your classroom. 10 12 Make a Poetry Cube 1 2 3 1 5 6 4 3 2 The Big Book of Classroom Poems Scholastic Teaching Resources The Big Book of Classroom Poems © Kathleen M. Hollenbeck,. Twisters. Many of the poems in the alphabet section of this book can be used as tongue twisters. Invite students to select words from the poems or any words they like—to make their own tongue. to their distance from the sun.) On each planet, have students glue a conversation bubble that tells what the planet might have said to express the way it felt in the poem. 8 The Big Book of Classroom