November 17, 2022 · curriculum
It’s November! We made it through most of the Fall and the election! Thanksgiving (and a break!) is around the corner, so sharing some reminders and activities. Here are some from the past: Thanksgiving & Native American Heritage Month Resources & Reminders . Always center Native American perspectives however you address Thanksgiving in your classroom (and in general). For example, you and your students could look at the Native Land map to see whose land you're on and emphasize that they are still here. You could research the tribe whose land you are on and find out about where they are living now. Also, show students the table depicting original tribal names and note that many tribal names were changed by white settlers. Learn about land acknowledgements by watching Land Acknowledgement | Molly of Denali . (Sidenote, Molly of Denali is a great example of representation, own voices, and
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April 10, 2022 · national month
Happy April or National Poetry Month! Poetry is something to infuse into your classroom (and life) everyday, but if you don’t have time to teach a standalone poetry unit, you can use it as a morning greeting, introduction to a topic or subject, or a way to share information. There are so many different types of poems. We don’t have a poetry unit as part of our 3rd grade curriculum, but we make sure to have plenty of poetry books in our classroom. I’ve learned that students who read one novel in verse often want to try others, so I always include them on my “teacher recommendations” shelf. Novels in verse also make wonderful read alouds, too. They sound beautiful when read aloud and are relatively quick reads. Here are some ideas for teaching poetry that we shared in 2019 . Many of these could be standalone lessons or part of a larger poetry unit. In the past, Gabby read This is a Poem
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January 14, 2019 · curriculum
From A Fire In My Hands, by Gary Soto Happy Snow Day to any other teachers who are at home like me today! Since I actually had time to read books that were not for school today, I was reminded of a poetry unit we taught with our fifth graders. There were so many great sessions, examples, ideas, and books for teaching poetry at NCTE (which I attended in November) that it made me miss teaching a full poetry unit! For those of you who have a poetry unit or are just looking for new ways to teach, introduce, or incorporate poetry, here are some of my favorite lesson ideas: Start by asking students what is poetry? How can you tell if something is a poem? What makes something a poem? We asked our students to think about these questions and then looked at a lot of different poems together. This is a great way of dispelling misconception (poems must rhyme, anything can be a poem, etc). Our
poetryliteracymentoread aloudNCTE
December 15, 2016 · book review
Crazy Hair b y Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean This is one of our favorite books! Ms. Arca reads this one, but we both relate. Summary : This book is a rhyming text (we call it a poem) in which a little girl asks the main character why his hair is so "crazy". He responds with the most dazzling array of answers. There are beasts that live in his hair, and a circus, and hot air balloons.. The art is also phenomenal. Each stanza ends with "..inside my crazy hair" and even our 5th graders will fill in that section and join in the reading. How we use it: We use this text in our poetry unit . We LOVE it. This is one of the last poems that we have our students write in the unit because it is more personal. The prompt for this poem is to take back ownership and claim an aspect of yourself that you sometimes feel insecure, judged, or uncomfortable about. I (Ms. Arca) then talk about how even though
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