Happy Friday 🙂 I have posted before how much I have been LOVING using poetry with my students. We sounds so advanced don’t we? If you would have told me a year ago that I would be using poetry in my autism classroom I may or may not have laughed in your face. Or behind your back at least. Poetry for some reason intimidated me. It seemed like it would be way too hard for my kids and they didn’t get. Boy was I wrong!
We started small but we now go through 2 or 3 poems a week. We start with a teacher turn/student turn rotation and practice reading it. We usually identify rhyming pairs and incorporate some comprehension questions as well. They are really liking it. They love funny poems and especially anything with boy humor… shocking I know. I shared our Gingerbread poem worksheet last month that my cousin oh so generously wrote for us (she is a preschool teacher currently completing a poem a day for 365 challenge – check out her blog: Rachel’s Poem Challenge). The timing of her poem endeavor has aligned quite perfectly with the up we took in our poetry game. I can order my own personalized poems if we need one for a certain topic. Well – we needed one for snow globes.
Snow globes was a word in our January Bingo that I realized not all of my students knew. I thought a great extension activity would be a poem and then we could incorporate a little imaginative writing as well. I made the poem into a worksheet. We practiced reading it a bunch and then drew a picture. They loved that! The picture helps me assess their comprehension as well as evoke a ton of great expressive language through question asking/answering. Check out my picture drawing intervention I use.
So cute: 🙂
You are probably wondering how I store and organize my poems. Oh you weren’t? You aren’t as freakishly obsessed with having everything neat and organized as I am? Dang. I’ll tell you anyways. We display our poem in our morning group area. I made a make shift clipboard out of patterned masking tape, cardboard, and a binder clip. Worked perfectly. I am tired of spending money on this class. I’m sure you feel me.
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2 Responses
You guys are a freakishly talented family, lol, I wish I could say the same for mine. I love the poetry idea and will steal a few from your cousin’s website, as well as the ones you shared. I think your site is awesome, and I totally appreciate everything you blog. I am going to incorporate many of your ideas, as well as your fellow teacher on autism tank, when I try to put together a new autism middle school program at my school this fall. Thanks again.
Thanks so much Jannike! My cousin will be happy to hear 🙂 Thanks for reading!