This month of poetry centers has had its successes and its challenges. The greatest challenge is finding ways to both share poetry and integrate the centers (as well as adding library skills to the centers). The greatest success has been the amount of writing that is occurring. I am heartened by the courageous poets who are willing to share their ideas, passions, and vision.
The students are whipping out some poems and thoughtfully working through others, but either way, they are writing...and enjoying it. They are playing with words, which I think bodes well for their writing futures. Referring to this centers-based unit, someone talked about "play" in my library (versus skill development). I think that all play is learning and that all learning is important. I will build in more library skills, but watching the students writing poetry these past two weeks makes me think of my mother's phrase, "Children need to know the joy of unsupervised, unstructured play." This poetry unit is supervised and somewhat structured, but it doesn't feel like it, it feels full of joy. "Mrs. Reed, come read my poem!" can be heard over and over. That is a cool thing to be hearing. I look forward to seeing the impact of this experience on future projects. Write on!
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