POETRY IN EDUCATION 1

Hermelinda Martinez
LBS 355-02
Poetry in Education
Paper #3 Draft #2
Pages. 1-4
November 11, 2016
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Poetry In Education

When children hear the word poems or poetry they seem to lose interest in the topic of

discussion. Poetry can be difficult to understand because of the language that is used,

like metaphors, simile, imagery, and symbolic language to describe experiences. I

believe that teaching poetry can be very beneficial because children need to listen to

figurative language and understand that the repetitions that poetry has will improve their

reading. These three articles titled: Repeated reading of poetry can influence fluency, A

Powerful medium for literacy and technology development and Attitudes to reading

surveys rhyme or reason are an exploration of ways to gain interest in childrens poetry

that include repeated reading, performance and digital representation.

In the first article, Sizmur (2007) describes how children can develop an

infectious zest for poetry. In a few surveys that Sizmur conducted, she says that the

decline in reading enjoyment appears to have diminished. Some of the children she

worked with during the surveys told her that poems were a bit pointless and quite easy

to read (Sizmur, 2007). I believe that what Sizmur did in incorporating plays of their

favorite media with poems, is a great idea to get the kids motivated and excited to learn

poetry. I can totally see myself doing what Sizmur did in creating plays and fun

activities that can help children gain interest in poetry. Having to actually act out a

poem is a lot more fun that just having it read to children, or having them read it on their

own.

The next article Repeated reading of poetry can influence fluency, was very

interesting and by far, my favorite because I believe and have seen great improvement

with children that read the same stories over and over. Reading fluency is a

multidimensional skill that must be explicitly taught and modeled. Faver (2008) tells us
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that repeated reading is a process in which a student reads a particular passage daily

over several days to improve their reading fluency (Faver, 2008). I have been working

with children from grades 4 and 5 that have learning disabilities, which causes them to

be at a lower grade level in reading and have seen great improvement in their reading

because of reading fluency. According to Faver, reading fluency has been very

beneficial in more than one study. Reading fluency is something I will definitely apply

when I start teaching by assigning them a story every Monday and have them practice

all week. Every Friday I will have them read it to me to see how they improved.

Our last article is about incorporating digital devices into poetry. Nowadays,

children seem to focus on technology and most of the time, refer to it while doing

homework or when they want to learn about something new. Hughes (2007) mentions

in the article that we need to find interesting and meaningful ways to engage children

with poetry and I believe that technology will help children gain interest. I see it at work

all the time; when a child is given an IPAD, they tend to focus more on what they are

doing, simply because they have buttons to press and headphones. Most of the

schools have integrated digital technology and its up to the teacher and future teachers

to make the best out it.

I have never been the type of person that reads poetry and it is mainly because

my teachers or parents did not introduce me to poetry enough for me to like it. I will

definitely teach poetry and use some of these strategies that I learned by reading these

articles. All I need are strategies to teach poetry and to make children want to read

poetry by doing fun activities like performing the poems, using digital devices to search

for interesting poems, and repeated reading like reading fluency.

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References

Faver, S. (2008). Repeated reading of poetry can influence fluency. Reading

Teachers, 62(4), 350-352.

Hughes, J. (2007). Poetry: A powerful medium for literacy and technology

development. What Works? The Literacy and Numeracy Secretary, Ontario Ministry

of Education, 1-4.

Sizmur, J. (2007). Attitudes to reading survey-Rhyme or reason. Vol. 57, 28-31.