Juli Kendall's Weekly
Reading Workshop Journal

A MiddleWeb Listserv Project

Self-selected members of the MiddleWeb Discussion List are joining together to explore the Reading Workshop and other ideas about supporting young adolescent readers. Juli Kendall, a reading teacher/coach in Long Beach, California, is helping moderate the discussion. Juli is also keeping a weekly journal of her own Reading Workshop initiative. Find out more about our project at our Reading Workshop homepage. You'll find Juli's background article here. Links to many of the tools created by Juli and her colleagues are embedded in these journals. Most often, when you click on them, a PDF file will begin to download. You'll find a list of the downloads here.

Week #15
Struggling Readers
and the Magic of Poetry

I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;
I'll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may)
I shan't be gone long. -You come too.

-- From THE PASTURE by Robert Frost

"Give me a break! Struggling readers and Robert Frost?" That was my first thought when I started reading Love That Dog by Sharon Creech. As I began this new book, recommended by a friend, I thought it might be just the thing to bring our readers into poetry. But it includes two poems by Robert Frost. I didn't need to worry; it is a magical, little book that brings everything (reading and writing) together in the most remarkable ways.

We work in Reading Workshop to put poetry into our daily reading life. Since the beginning of the year, we've read 2 or 3 poems aloud every day. Without much discussion, but rather just for listening and enjoying. We use the work of a variety of poets: Maya Angelou, Walter Dean Meyers, Jack Prelutsky, Langston Hughes, Shel Silverstein, Douglas Florian and others.

In addition, we use poems from Joyful Noise, Poems for Two Voices, for choral reading and reading fluency. We divide into two groups and read as a class. We read the same ones over and over enthusiastically (loudly) enjoying their familiarity. This has been very successful. "Water Striders" is the class favorite.

Whenever we're asked         Whenever we're asked
if we walk upon water          if we walk upon water
we answer
                                            Of course.
To be sure.
                                            It's quite true.

-- From WATER STRIDERS by Paul Fleischman,
Joyful Noise, Poems for Two Voices

As the time had come to do a genre study on poetry, we wanted to incorporate mentor text for poetry as Read Aloud material in Writing Workshop. (I was further inspired by John Norton's comments on the Middleweb Reading Workshop listserv concerning Billy Collins, our new Poet Laureate.)

I decided to read the book, Love That Dog, during Reading Workshop. Then I extended the poetry reading during Writing Workshop with other examples from the same poets and the same types of poetry used by Sharon Creech. This turned out to be a powerful combination for the students. (A list of poetry books we read follows.)

Our students made an immediate connection to Jack, the narrator of the book, and his reactions to the poems that his teacher read to his class.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

-- From STOPPING BY WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING by Robert Frost

After his teacher read "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," Jack commented, "Why doesn't the person just / keep going if he's got / so many miles to go / before he sleeps?"

It has been truly amazing to hear their comments and discussions about the book and the poems. Their interest in the material has certainly raised the level of their discourse. For many of them, Jack is a character with whom they can totally identify. His first person free verse narrative is a "think aloud" for them. It's a model of how to think about poetry. Of Robert Frost he says, "I think Mr. Robert Frost / has a little / too / much / time / on his / hands."

The class was captivated by Jack's word choice and quickly picked up the meaning of terms such as "anonymous" and incorporated them into their oral vocabularies. Talk about "learning vocabulary in context." Now, when someone in class has a poem they have written that they want to "try out," they give the author as "Anonymous" and share it with others-risk free. Only a few students are using this new option, but it seems to have freed up everyone's writing and their willingness to share.

As we started in on the concrete poems, you could hear the students saying, "I don't know how to read this. How do I read this?" We discovered as we attempted to read more of them that they tend to "look like" what they are about. It was really fun to watch them get the "gist" of these poems. One of our favorite concrete poems is titled "Poem" by Richard Meltzer. It's from a collection of poems, A Poke in the I, that we enjoy.
a poem moves down a page





faster than a novel

-- From POEM by Richard Meltzer
A Poke in the I

The last poem in Love That Dog was written by Walter Dean Meyers and is titled "Love That Boy." He included it in a collection of his poems titled, Brown Angels, and it touched everyone deeply. Some of the students were reminded of their fathers and others did, as Jack with his dog, and put the poem into their own context.
Love to call him in the morning,
Love to call him, "Hey there, son!"

-- From LOVE THAT BOY by Walter Dean Meyers
Love to call him in the morning,
Love to call him, "Hey there, Sky!"

-- From LOVE THAT DOG by Jack
Inspired by Walter Dean Meyers
Love to call him in the morning,
Love to call him, "Hey there, Tie!"\

-- From LOVE THAT KILLING DOG by Vuthy
Inspired by Walter Dean Meyers and Jack

So what is the power of combining writing and reading? Well, this brings us back to the connections between writing and reading -- the fact that writers put understandings in their texts and that readers get understandings from texts as they read. And that's what reading is all about -- understanding, even when you are reading poetry.
I love the book and the look of words
The weight of ideas that popped into my mind
I love the tracks
of new thinking in my mind.

-- From I LOVE THE LOOK OF WORDS by Maya Angelou
Soul Looks Back in Wonder


POETRY LIST to go along with Love That Dog

1. Georgia Heard
Awakening the Heart: Exploring Poetry in Elementary and Middle School

2. Douglas Florian
Beast Feast
Insectopedia
In the Swim
Lizards, Frogs and Polliwogs
Mammalabilia
On the Wing

3. Arnold Adoff
Touch That Poem

4. Valerie Worth
all the small poems and fourteen more

5. Paul B. Janeczko
A Poke in the I, a collection of concrete poems

6. Walter Dean Meyers
Angel to Angel, A Mother's Gift of Love
Brown Angels, An Album of Pictures and Verse

7. Paul Fleischman
Joyful Noise, Poems for Two Voices

8. Tom Feelings
Soul Looks Back in Wonder

9. Robert Frost
You Come Too, Favorite Poems for Young Readers

10. Naomi Shihab Nye
Salting the Ocean, 100 Poems by Young Poets (K-12)


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