Children are natural poets. They speak poetry all day long. They say wonderful poetic gems that surprise and delight us and help us look at the world in a new way. In Climb Inside a Poem: Reading and Writing Poetry Across the Year, Georgia Heard and Lester Laminack tap into this natural inclination and demonstrate how reading and writing poetry can also support and extend young children's language and literacy development. Through an anthology of original children's poems and related lessons, Georgia and Lester describe how to weave poetry into the fabric of a school day by reading a variety of poems for a variety of purposes. Building on these experiences, children then engage in a formal unit of study on writing poetry.
Climb Inside a Poem has three components.
- The poetry anthology, Climb Inside a Poem: Original Poems for Children, uses the writings of contemporary children’s poets, whimsical illustrations, and an expansive big book format (14”x18”) to create a 36-page poetry playground.
- Lessons for Climb Inside a Poem provides a five-day sequence of lessons for each poem in the anthology. Through repeated readings and by accessing the poems from multiple perspectives, these lessons model how poetry can be used to support basic concepts in print, develop word awareness, expand reading and writing fluency, and help children write with feeling and voice.
- Reading and Writing Poetry Across the Year takes a broad view of poetry and considers how poems can be used to reinforce and extend a literacy curriculum. Organized into three separate sections, the minilessons in this guide offer tips for outfitting and organizing classrooms where poetry can flourish; highlight a variety of reading strategies that immerse children in the words and music of poetry; and present a complete unit of study for writing poetry.
