Poetry in kindergarten?

Hello all :) First I will start by sharing that this is my FIRST blog post EVER! Christina has convinced me to join her in blogging about our experiences together teaching kindergarten, and I am excited to get into the blogging groove!

One of my favorite literacy stations that my kids go to is our poetry station. It started out a little slow at the beginning of the year, but it is a great way to integrate literacy and content! To start the year I used sight word poems to reinforce sight words we were learning each week, then from there I began to add in content poems.

Let me explain...I google, pinterest and look up different poems in books that are themed to different topics we learn about. We have poems about everything from Christopher Columbus to recycling and Earth Day. Many of the poems even go to familiar tunes, which make them even more fun for the kids!

I typically introduce a poem with each new unit of study. We are about to do a study on our state (Virginia) so I have a new Virginia poem that goes to a tune and a state flower and bird poem. Not only does this help them track print and read words in this station, it also reinforces the content knowledge. I find that the kids remember important information more when we have poems that go with them.

In the station I hang my poems on clothing hangers and have a pointer ready for students to use to track the print. They have multiple poems at their finger tips to choose from on the hangers and are able to hang them up to read on a command hook. There is also a pocket chart available so that they can assemble some of the poems that I have also written on sentence strips. Some poems also have pictures to match to the sentence strips and there are also individual cut up words to match cut words to the sentence strip words in the pocket chart. They are always on task at this station and really enjoy when new poems are introduced. 

Stephanie :)