Using Poetry to Support Struggling Readers

Did you know the use of poetry in the classroom has been on the decline in recent years? (Gill, 2007)

This statistic makes me sad, because poetry is a fantastic tool to use in the classroom--especially for struggling readers! 

Below are four reasons why poetry is PERFECT to use with students with reading difficulties.

1. Less Text

Struggling readers often get overwhelmed when they see a long text passage or story, which makes the concise format of a poem less stressful.  The text of a poem is often shorter, and the use of stanzas (groups of lines within the poem) chunk text on a frequent basis.    

Chunked text, and less of it, reduce the overwhelm a struggling reader might feel.  In addition, less text means a greater likelihood a struggling reader will be able to master the text more quickly.  Experiencing reading success is a great confidence booster! 

2. Build Phonological Awareness Skills

Did you know problems with phonological awareness have been identified as a major cause of reading difficulties? (Share, 2011)  Phonological awareness skills are ESSENTIAL  in order to become a successful reader, as they are the anchor to written words.  

Awareness of the sounds in spoken language is required to learn letter-sound correspondences; to blend sounds together to decode a word; and to "map" words into long-term sight vocabulary. (Kilpatrick, 2015)   
When teachers use poetry in the classroom, students will be building their PA skills.  Students will be hearing rhymes, alliteration and syllabication. 

Also, many poems lend themselves to the exploration of individual phonemes which helps build phonemic awareness. Make sure to check out Playing with Poetry to Develop Phonemic Awareness by Mary Jo Fresh, a professor of Teaching and Learning at The Ohio State University.  In this quick read, Fresh provides a variety of teaching ideas that would be easy to try in you classroom!

Phonological Awareness work in action! When students heard a word that ended with a long o sound--they highlighted it.

3. More Opportunities to Read 

The more we can get text in front of a student--the better!  Poetry is often rehearsed and then performed--which is ideal for repeated readings.  Struggling readers need lots and lots and lots of opportunities to interact with text.  Rehearsal of poetry is an authentic way to provide those opportunities.

Repeated Readings don't have to be boring! Students could work with a partner, read the poem in a silly voice or record themselves reading the poem.  Vary the way students re-read to increase engagement. 

4. Increased Engagement 

I can vividly remember the first time I heard a Shel Silverstein poem.  I was in the fourth grade and my teacher, Ms. Child's read from Where the Sidewalk Ends.  I was immediately hooked!  On my next trip to the library, I checked out every Shel Silverstein book available!

 And...that's all it takes to hook a reader......one exposure!

As teachers, we want to foster the love of reading in our students.  Unfortunately, learning to read is REALLY hard work for struggling readers!  And...when something is hard--we don't often enjoy it.  

But, poetry.  Poetry is different.  It has that "something special" that kids crave!  

Do you want more reasons why poetry is perfect for a student who struggles to read?  Check out this article from literacy expert, Timothy Rasinski titled What's the Perfect Text for Struggling Readers?  Try Poetry!

Now.....lets go turn that statistic around and start using more poetry in our classrooms!

Top 10 Poetry Activities To Use In Your Classroom

There are still a couple weeks left to celebrate National Poetry Month!  

Scroll through these ten ideas--I promise they are easy, fun and great ways to incorporate poetry into your classroom!

1. Poem of the Week

Select one poem to share with students for each week of the school year.  Each day spend a few minutes interacting with the selected poem.  Below is a sample schedule you may want to use.   

• Monday--Read the poem to your students.  Have them echo read the poem back to you.

• Tuesday--Add actions to the poem.  Choral read the poem as a class with the actions.

• Wednesday--Pick a skill (rhyming words, adjectives, nouns, personification, etc.) and have students highlight those words in the poem.  Do a repeated reading with the poem. 

• Thursday--Black Out Poetry.  Students black out several words in the poem, and input new words in.  Students read their "new poem" with a partner or several partners.

• Friday--Quick Draw.  Echo, cloze, choral or partner read the poem several times.  Give students one minute to draw what they visualized. 

There are SO MANY additional ideas for activities to do with poems. If you are looking for more great ideas, check out this list from Edutopia or this list from Home School Resource Room. 

2. Write Poetry

Writing poetry really gives students a chance to let their creativity and imagination take center stage. A great way to introduce poetry writing is by using simple poetry that follows a pattern. Some great starter poems to get pencil to paper are acrostics and shape poems. 

 

Another helpful tool for writing poetry are poetry templates.  With poetry templates, students have example poems to help them create their own poetry!  Students just have to fill in the blanks!

If you are looking for more in-depth lessons on writing poetry with your students, check out this article from Scholastic. 

3. Poetry Read Aloud

Children love when they are read too, and reading poetry is no exception.  Kids of all ages can be thoroughly engaged and entertained when you share poetry. 

Check out this list of nine teacher recommended poetry books.  These compilations will be sure to delight all listeners.  

4. Poetry Performances

Supply each student with a poem, and have them rehearse and then perform the poem to the class (or a partner).  Some teachers like to get real fancy and have a poetry performance day complete with a red carpet, flowers on tables, a stage.....

5. Poetry Voices

Much like performing poetry, the teacher will provide each student with a poem.  The student will then rehearse the poem and then perform the poem to the class (or a partner) using a silly voice. 

6. Fluency Practice

Reading poetry aloud to students is great way to model fluent reading while building listening skills.  Poetry lends itself to many opportunities for expression, phrasing and smoothness.  Pick a favorite poem and have students choral or echo read as a class!

Let students pick a poem and have them do repeated readings or partner readings.  Rehearsing poetry is often a great motivator for students, as the text is often concise and rich with colorful and engaging language. 

7. Create a Class Book of Poetry

After spending time writing a variety of poems, allow each student to select his or her best work and create a "published" classroom book.  

For extra fun (and to brag about your class's awesome writing skills), allow each student to take the book home to share with their families!   

8. Listen to Poetry Performances

Have you heard about The Children's Poetry Archive?  It is a place where you can listen to poems read aloud!  They have a HUGE archive of poems organized by theme, grade level and even poets.

Also a simple search on YouTube can yield lots of results of poetry readings from celebrities to students.  Be sure to check out The Poetry Foundation, which has several video recordings of poetry performances.

9. Act Out a Poem

It is always great when we give kids a chance to get up and get moving.  Not only is it fun for kids, but movement helps reinforce learning.  So, why not pair poetry with movement?  

After multiple repeated readings and rehearsals have you students perform a poem in small groups, individually or with a partner.  For an extra level of fun, you could invite other classes or parents to watch the performances! 

10. Visualize a Poem

Visualizing is a powerful comprehension tool, and fun for kids to do!  Read a poem aloud, listen to a poetry performance or have students read a poem independently; and then have them draw what they pictured in their brain.  

I like to have students do "quick draw" where they only get 1 minute to draw the images they created in their mind.  Quick draws get 100% participation and they don't eat up a lot of instructional time!  

5 Mistakes Teachers Make With Fluency Instruction

Teaching fluent reading can be tricky!  Most of us never took a class in college which covered effective reading instruction...AND as elementary teachers we have more than just one subject to devote our time to studying. 

Some teachers may just be winging the whole "fluency thing,"  Teachers are simply doing the best they can with the tools they have in their toolkit.  So, it seems reasonable that we might be making a few mistakes.  The good news---common mistakes are easy to fix!  

Keep reading to find out the top 5 mistakes teachers make with fluency practice, AND what you can do to fix those mistakes!

1.  Fluent reading is fast reading

No!  Fluency does not mean reading fast.  Kids and teachers feel the pressure when any sort of assessment throws a time component on to it.  Yes, a certain amount of words correct per minute (wcpm) are good indicators of reading success---but teachers and students should not be hyper-fixated on reading fast to reach a certain benchmark.  

Fluency should sound like you are talking.  This means our students need to be explicitly taught that good readers have expression, high accuracy, appropriate rate and smoothness while reading aloud.  A great way to do this is by demonstrating what fluent reading sounds like, and what it doesn't. 

2.  Round Robin or Popcorn Reading

Just Stop doing BOTH of these. Round robin reading is when one student reads a text selection aloud to the class, while others follow along and then a new reader is chosen.  Popcorn reading is when a student orally reads for a certain amount of time, and then calls out "popcorn" before selecting a classmate to read aloud.  These practices make students who struggle with reading extremely uncomfortable.  There is plenty of research to suggest that these two reading strategies do NOT provide students with enough opportunities for decoding, as only a brief portion of text is required of them to read.

Instead have students engage in choral, partner, cloze or echo reading.  You can read about these practices in detail by reading an earlier blog post, How Can We Help Kids Who Are Disfluent? 

3.  Easy or Difficult Text Selection

There needs to be a "just right" selection of text for students to read during daily fluency practice.  The text shouldn't be too easy.  If students are breezing through a passage, the text selection isn't challenging them enough to apply their decoding skills.  A too easy passage means they likely already have these words mapped, and that really isn't helping kids acquire new skills. The students need something a bit more challenging. 

On the flipside, if a student is struggling to read a passage--it is too difficult.  The student is spending too much of their mental energy decoding each word and not working toward fluent reading.  Sound by sound or robotic reading would be an indicator the passage is too challenging.  

We want our text selection to make kids work--but not make them work too hard. Literacy expert, Timothy Shanahan, suggests selecting text where kids would make approximately 10 errors per 100 words. 

4. Lack of Teacher Modeling

If you aren't reading to your students daily--you need to start! Students need to hear what good readers sound like.  By listening to a good model of fluent reading, students learn that expression and phrasing can aide in making written text make sense. Reading a text aloud is also a great time to expose students to rich vocabulary words, vast topics and help students experience the joy of reading! Check out these read aloud resources from Reading Rockets, by clicking here. 

5. No Teacher Feedback

A child can't improve, unless direct feedback is given.  Students need to know what they should be working on in order to become a better reader.  Does the student need to work on a specific phonic skill, smoothness, expression, or maybe phrasing?     

I am a big fan of positive error correction when giving feedback to students.  Positive error correction is when you tell students something they did correct before you provide error correction.  Check out this video from Linda Farrell as she goes in depth on the strategy of positive error correction.

   

Tracking Student Fluency Success

You've implemented daily fluency practice....now what?!?

Is what you have implemented moving the needle?  Are you helping disfluent readers become fluent? 

A way to gauge effectiveness is by tracking student success.  Use the following three ideas to begin tracking student progress.

1. Rubric Scoring

• Fluent reading is more than just speed.  Fluent reading is E.A.R.S (expression, accuracy, rate and smoothness).  One way to track student progress is by scoring your students on a fluency rubric.  This can be done bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.

•  Have a student read aloud to you for one minute and score the child based on the fluency rubric of choice.  Use the score to conference with students and continue with fluency interventions or adjust to a new plan.  Remember students need specific feedback...so they know what to work on!

2. Graph Progress

• Seeing progress is a POWERFUL motivator for students.  Graphing progress allows students to see that their effort and hard work is paying off. 

• Have students read a fluency passage for one minute and track how many words correct they read (rate) and their accuracy.  Students will then place their scores on a graph, similar to the one pictured below. Progress graphing can be done on more than just fluency passages--it can be done with high frequency words, letter naming, letter sounds....anything!

• If you are tracking words correct per minute---make sure you also graph for accuracy.  I always draw a black bar at the 95% mark and tell my students that 95% or higher is PERFECT for reading.  Tracking accuracy along with WCPM helps students realize that fluent reading isn't just fast reading! 

3. High Frequency Words and Phrases Mastery 

• Mastering high frequency words and phrases is a great way to develop fluent reading. Using high frequency booklets, flashcards or intensity boards are solid ways for students to get this practice.  Rehearsal of high frequency words and phrases becomes more impactful when students are tracking their mastery.  

• In my intervention group we use a simple three-star strategy.  Each time a student reads a word or phrase correctly, the student gets a star (or other small symbol--smiley face, check mark, etc).  Mastery is achieved when students have read a word or phrase three times.  We do daily practice, so it typically takes students three days for mastery of a particular set of words or phrases.  When they get three stars--they get a small prize and move on to the next list, group of words, etc.  

• The images below show an intensity board with high frequency words and high frequency booklets with words and phrases.  Both of the images are highlighting how success is being tracked--by plus signs and small symbols.   

One important note about tracking student's progress with words correct per minute (WCPM): Student's WCPM scores should be compared to normed scores.  

Comparing students scores to normed scores is imperative  because normed oral reading fluency scores have proven to be a reliable, useful and practical measure to determine which students might need intervention and which students are proficient readers.   

The most widely adopted normed oral reading fluency (ORF) tables are from 25 years of research done by Jan Hasbrouck and Gerald Tindal, typically referred to as the Hasbrouck-Tindal Fluency Norms.  Teachers can use these tables to draw conclusions and make decisions about the oral reading fluency progress of their students. 

If you are interested in more information about the fluency norms, check out this article from Reading Rockets which takes a deep dive into fluency norm tables.

Where can I fit daily fluency practice into my schedule?

The instructional day for students (and teachers) is packed.  This makes it difficult to find time to implement anything new.  

Time is JUST SO precious, isn't it?

While we can't create more time (sure would be nice, huh?), we can try to find (or carve out) small moments in the day for important instructional tasks.  

We know fluent reading is important, and we know the way achieve fluent reading is through opportunities to practice what students have learned.

This means we MUST give students multiple opportunities to read text appropriate for them.  

We have to make it a priority to find time for daily fluency practice. Take a look at the suggestions below to see where you might fit daily fluency practice into your day.  

• Morning Routine--Use fluency practice as a bell ringer activity.  After students have entered the classroom and put away their things, have them engage in repeated readings or partner readings. 

• End of the Day--After students pack up have students participate in echo, choral or cloze reading to wrap up the day.  Students could also partake in repeated readings or reading with a partner.

• Transitions--When students transition back from specials, lunch or recess they can do a 5-10 minute fluency activity, much like the morning routine option.  This would be a great opportunity to get students to calm their bodies and brains.

• Centers--Have fluency practice as a center choice on a daily basis. Students could partner read, do repeated readings with whisper phones, or even record themselves reading each day!

• Small Group--devote 5 minutes of each small group time to fluency practice.  This could be in the form of one breath boxes, high frequency words and phrases, high frequency flashcards or repeated readings of appropriate leveled passages your small group is working on.  

• Whole Group-Start out each reading lesson with 5-10 minutes of fluency practice.  Perhaps each week you could select a poem and then do various fluency activities with the poem each day.  Monday could be Choral reading, Tuesday Echo reading, Wednesday Cloze reading, etc. 

• RTI--have fluency work be apart of each tier 2 and tier 3 group.  Groups could engage in readers theater or repeated readings.  Fluency work could be the entire focus of the group, or just a portion of it. 

So, how much time should be devoted to daily fluency practice?  Well, according to Dr. Timothy Shanahan you should schedule 30 to 45 minutes per day for fluency instruction.  This doesn't have to be in one time block--break the thirty minutes up in various chunks.  The important thing is that fluency instruction should be happening!

If you take time to reflect on your daily schedule, you may find 5 to 10 minutes at various points of the day where you can squeeze in intentional fluency practice.  Or perhaps there is something that isn't quite moving the needle that you may cut out in order to implement a new fluency routine.

What do you do for daily fluency practice? I'd love to know!

How can we help kids who are disfluent?

We know fluency is important.  

We know fluent reading is the bridge to comprehension.

But.... what can we do to help disfluent readers? 

To best help a disfluent reader, we must first determine what stage the student is at.  This will help us find the best strategy for the reader.  

Is the student a beginning reader (kindergarten or first grade)?

Is the reader one who is making adequate progress?

Or, is the reader one who is struggling?

Lets look at a beginning reader first.  A beginning reader is someone in kindergarten and first grade who is attaching letters to their sounds and blending them into simple words.  To improve reading fluency for these students a teacher should:

• Spend a significant amount of time on accurate text reading
• Implement a systematic daily practice for learning to read words accurately
• Model fluent reading.
• Give students lots of opportunity to read and re-read decodable text
• Encourage students to read "like they are talking." 

Now, lets look at a reader who is on-level or making adequate progress.  These are students in grades two or higher who are average and making adequate gains. How do we keep the momentum going?  How do we maintain their progress? To do this a teacher should use:

• Choral reading
• Echo Reading
• Cloze reading
• Partner reading
• Readers' theater 
• Poetry readings

Finally, lets look at struggling readers.   Disfluent readers need a mixture of what beginning readers  and on level students need. The best way for disfluent readers to become more fluent is by reading!  These students need:

• Focus on ACCURATE text reading.
• Use decodable text
• Repeated readings 
• Systemic daily practice of reading words accurately
• Modeled fluent reading
• Encourage students to read like they are talking
• LOTS of opportunities to read text (at their level) using choral, cloze, echo and partner reading.

If you would like to know how to define fluency and why being a fluent reader important, check out the first post in the series by clicking here.  

There are a ton of great articles written by reading gurus on the topic of fluency.  Check them out by clicking below.

Everything You Wanted to Know about Repeated Reading by Timothy Shanahan via Reading Rockets

Using Poetry to Teach Reading via Reading Rockets

Developing Fluent Readers by Jan Hasbrouck via Reading Rockets

I hope you will join us next time to discover ways you can fit daily fluency practice into your schedule!

Fluency: What is it, and why is it important?

Did you know that 36% of the nation's fourth graders are unable to fluently read? This is according to the 2018 National Assessment of Educational Progress Report. 

That is ONE out of EVERY THREE!  Wow....let that sink in....

Even more disturbing is the statistic that students who exit third grade unable to read, are FOUR TIMES as likely to not graduate high school.  Add poverty to the mix, and a student is THIRTEEN TIMES less likely to graduate.  (Sparks, 2011)

So, how do we turn that statistic around? 

One way is for us to truly understand what fluent reading is and what we can do to help students. 

What exactly is fluency?

Fluency is the ability to read a text accurately, quickly and with expression.

To explain it more simply, fluency is the ability to read like you speak. To take what is read and make it sound like spoken language.

When I explain it to students, I use the acronym E.A.R.S (Expression, Accuracy, Rate and Smoothness).  One of my colleagues and fellow reading interventionist shared this acronym with me years ago.  I love the simplicity of it and how easy it is for students to remember!  

Why is fluent reading important? 

When a student reads fluently, he or she automatically and effortlessly recognizes words on the page.  Because this process is automatic and effortless, more space is freed up in the student's brain to understand what is being read. 

On the flip side, if a student is disfluent, he or she is using available brain space to decode words.  The disfluent reader is spending all of their time trying to match letters and sounds and simply does not have the capacity to comprehend what is being read.  The brain is in overdrive.

Being a fluent reader is important, as fluent reading bridges the gap between word reading and comprehension.  The inability to read text accurately, quickly and with expression creates the inability to understand what one has read. 

Lets take the example of the text below, which is a direct quotation from BMC Medical Journal.  Try decoding this text AND understanding what is written. 

The text above was likely difficult for you to read, and there is an even greater likelihood that you struggled to glean meaning from the text (unless you are a medical professional). This short excerpt helps illustrate the point of how disfluent reading truly impacts comprehension.

Follow along with this blog series as I cover the following topics. 

Post 2: How can we help disfluent readers?

Post 3: How can I fit daily fluency practice into my day?

Post 4: How do we track student success? 

Post 5: Top mistakes teachers make regarding fluency.

Post 6: Resources to help with daily fluency practice. 

High Frequency Words Part 4: How to Master Regular High Frequency Words

In previous posts we covered how to help kids master irregularly spelled high frequency words (heart words).  But, how do you help with with regularly spelled high frequency words?

Don't worry, we will cover that today. :)

If you still need some guidance on heart words then click here. 

Do you need tips on how to master heart words?  Make sure to check out this post.  

Or, if you still are trying to distinguish a sight word from a high frequency word, then click here. 

Now...back to regularly spelled high frequency....

Regularly spelled high frequency words are words that are phonetically decodable.  These words are regularly spelled, and they are easily decoded.  As my students are working with these words I say "in this word all of the letters do what they are supposed to do, we just need to use what our brain knows about letters and sounds to figure this word out."  Some examples of regularly spelled high frequency words are: can, not, did, if, in, it, etc.

These regularly spelled high frequency words appear often in text, so students need to know them in a flash.  The same is true for writing.  These regularly spelled high frequency words are often used when a student writes--and they should be able to write them quickly. These words should be spelled and read effortlessly and automatically. 

So, what is the best way to teach phonetically decodable high frequency words?

1. Introduce these words when they fit into a particular phonics pattern that is being directly taught.  For example you can introduce in, is, if and it when students have learned vc and short i spelling patterns.  Words like with, that, when and which would be decodable after students have been taught digraphs and short vowel sounds. 

2.  Use graphophonemic analysis when teaching a new regularly spelled high frequency word. Write the word on the board and spell it aloud as you point to each letter.  Say the the sounds for each part of the word, and then say the whole word.  This type of instruction helps students with sound symbol association. 

3. Provide students with lots of opportunities to practice decoding and spelling these words. When getting students in text, it is important to start with words in isolation and then progress to sentences and finally stories.  Another great practice is to point out taught high frequency words as you are doing a read aloud, or during a time where you have a shared common text.  Also, give students time to write and spell these words....the more opportunity the better! 

One thing to note is that high frequency word instruction shouldn't happen until students have concept of word, phonemic awareness and individual letter sound relationships in place.  

If you want more information about high frequency word acquisition, check out some of these awesome resources below:

• International Literacy Association
•  Keys to Literacy blog by Joan Sedita
• Sight Words website

I am looking forward to wrapping up this blog series by sharing high frequency word resources on the last post in the series!  Stay tuned!

High Frequency Words Part 3: How to Master Heart Words

Last time we were together we took a moment to truly understand the meaning of heart words.  Not sure what a heart word is? Click here to read the previous post in this series High Frequency Words Part 2: Heart Words. 

Furthermore, if you want to know the difference between sight words and high frequency words, click here.  This will take you to the first post in the High Frequency Words series: High Frequency Words What Are They? 

For now we are going to spend some time on making those tricky high frequency words sticky for kids!

Follow the steps below to help kids master heart words. AND...if you haven't already checked out Linda Farrell's model for teaching heart words, I highly recommend it.  You can find it by going to Readster's website, or by clicking here.    

Step 1: Teach the phonetically regular part of the word (To make these tricky words not so overwhelming, fold heart words in with regular phonics instruction based on the pattern you are teaching.  For example they and their can be introduced when teaching the digraph /th/.

Step 2: Point out the part of the word that makes the word a heart word--the part that is not phonetically spelled correctly.  In following example, the teacher would make sure to put a heart above the e in the word "the" since the e doesn't do what it is supposed to.  It is really important that the teacher spends some time dialoging with students about why she/he is placing a heart there.  There is no need to place a heart above the digraph th because the th is doing what it is supposed to do. 

Step 3: Use multisensory techniques to reinforce these tricky words.  Some multi-sensory options are sky writing, arm tapping, rainbow writing or finger writing in sand, shaving cream, sugar or on a bumpy surface, etc.  The chart below names and describes some easy and effective multisensory techniques teachers can use with heart words.  Most involve little prep!  Click the link at the bottom of this post and grab the PDF of these techniques for free! :)  

It isn't necessary to use multi-sensory techniques with regularly spelled high frequency words....just the heart words.  Adding multi-modal to these irregularly spelled words helps our brains remember and map the words.  The words that aren't irregularly spelled don't need multi-sensory techniques as all of the letters do what they are supposed to.  If a student is struggling with reading a regular high frequency word prompt him or her to remember the sounds the letter(s) make.   

Step 4: Give students lots of exposure to these tricky words! Read aloud and independent reading is a great time to point out some of these words, or pre-teach them. 

If you are looking for a great resource to get these tricky words mastered, check out the resource below!  This heart word bundle has everything from flashcards to games!  Low prep and super engaging!  Whoop!

Next up......regular high frequency words! 

Ready to help your students master heart words?

Try these multisensory techniques to help with those tricky words!

​

We respect your privacy. Unsubscribe at any time.

Built with ConvertKit