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Poetry: Powerful Thoughts in Tiny Packages

by Jane White, 1-2 Teacher

The Primary Circle is in the middle of a poetry study. It's hard to imagine our very small children on a learning trajectory toward becoming the next William Shakespeares, Emily Dickinsons and Maya Angelous, isn't it? But you might be amazed, as I have been, by the writing they are doing in this unit-they are able to create poems with so much more weight and power than the rhyming jingles we often imagine young children's poetry to be!

We started by looking at the world through the eyes of a poet-examining objects closely and trying to see them in fresh, interesting ways. The children patiently studied and put words to the details and moments of life they noticed together.

Throughout the unit, we will study many ways poets work and some of the tools and strategies poets use. We'll work with the structure of poetry, learning how poets use line breaks and white space.We'll talk about and practice locating a big, universal feeling or idea in a small, personal object or moment.We'll discuss and try ways to find the precise words that convey our intended meaning.We'll experiment with rhythms and patterns, repetition and musicality.We'll build analogies, metaphors and similes, and extend those bits of figurative language throughout the bodies of our verses. Of course, as always, we'll revise and edit and publish our poems.

We started by writing our observations about ordinary objects placed in our "Poetry Museum" (the top of one of our bookshelves). Here are some of the group's extraordinary observations about ordinary things:

"The flowers look like teapots for worms."

"The hat is a whirlpool sucking you in."

"The shell is like an ant's house."

"The fish is like a magic rainbow."

"I see the hose as a snake slithering in the grass."

"Lucky fish painted like a tapestry is woven."

"Shells, small way of remembering the sea."