5 Reasons Why You Should Teach Poetry

Do you teach poetry in your classroom?

If you don't teach it YET, then hopefully this post will give you the courage to give it a try!

Lets dive into the TOP 5 reasons why you should be teaching poetry to your students!

1. Adds Text Variety!  

Researchers say it is important to have multiple types of texts in an educational setting. 

In fact, Teachers who have greater quality, greater quantity and a greater range of text types in their classrooms actually have kids who grow more in their reading comprehension during elementary school. (Duke, 2010)

Poetry is a great way to add variety to your instruction, and your classroom libraries.  Kids need (and want) variety!

2. Builds Reading and Listening Skills

Have you ever listened to someone recite poetry?  The spoken words have a magical, almost musical quality.  Reading poetry aloud to students is great way to model fluent reading while building listening skills.  Poetry lends itself to expression, phrasing and smoothness.

In addition to increasing listening skills, poetry is a great way to boost comprehension skills!  Poets carefully craft their verse with descriptive language---making it very easy for students to create mental images in their minds.  Visualizing is a powerful comprehension strategy!  

Check  Picture This from reading rockets, which gives steps to teachers (and parents) on how to increase mental imagery for their children. 

3. Increases Vocabulary

Poems offer students exposure to words that aren't normally used.  Poetic text is typically short, which means poets have to be very selective with the words they choose.  

Authors of poetry must use words that illicit vivid imagery and provide the intended effect when readers are interacting with the poem.  Which means....poems are abound with "juicy" new words for students to discover!

4. Builds Phonological Awareness Skills

What is phonological awareness?  Well....phonological awareness (PA for short) is the broad skill that encompasses identifying and manipulating all parts of oral language.  PA is an umbrella which has houses skills underneath (i.e. rhyming, identifying final, medial and initial sounds, syllabication, etc.).

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.  

In addition, there are many activities teachers can do with poetry to build PA skills with their students.  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!

5. Creates a Love of Reading 

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!  And...when something is hard--we don't often enjoy it.  

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

Children's Poetry Books

When we share poetry with children, it is essential that we share GREAT examples of poetry.  Some of my favorite poets are Shel Silverstein, Jack Prelutsky and Roald Dahl.  I guarantee if you share poems from any of those authors---kids will beg for more!