Beth Kovalcik, Janine L. Certo

"The Poetry Café is Open!"

The article focused on teaching devices of sound in poetry within a 2nd grade classroom. The project was team-taught by teachers, and it included daily read alouds, 4 minilessons, and independent writing time in journals. The ultimate goal of these activities was to hold a café-like setting in the classroom where students would be able to share a piece of poetry they wrote for parents and administrators. The classroom would be transformed using tablecloths, vases with flowers, trays with pastries, and beverages, with a stool in the middle of the classroom that was considered the stage. One point the author really pushed was that poetry was meant to be both read out loud and listened too, so students are able to understand the power of language.

The students in the article were in the 2nd grade, so being in a 4th grade classroom, I definitely think I could use it. You also have to know your students and I think that some classrooms would not be able to handle the transformation of a classroom into a café setting. Some students could definitely ruin it for the whole class. If I was to use this idea it would fit in with Writer’s/ Reader’s Workshop. I say both of them because reading different genres of poetry is important, so during readers, the teacher would read a few examples and the students could share reading with a partner, then during the minilesson the students could write their own in their writer’s notebook.

As a professional I definitely need to learn more about poetry or observe a poetry lesson. I feel like I do not even fully understand the different elements of poetry, so how can I explain it to students in the classroom. It is a huge unit in the 4th grade that is why I chose to read the article and learn more about it.

From the Module I think it is really important to not always focus on just formal assessments, but also informal. Having students create and write in journals is an assessment. After a minilesson about writing, what the students create afterwards is a form of assessment, seeing what skills students took away.