Poetry Friday

It’s Friday morning and I’m sitting in a hotel room, being a bit lazy after two very full days of presenting staff development workshops focusing on writing. I’m so glad that two months ago I booked an afternoon departure so I could enjoy a late-start luxury. Here’s my Poetry Friday poem —

Slinky Malinki
by Lynley Dodd

Slinky Malinki
was blacker than black,
a stalking and lurking
adventurous cat.

He had bright yellow eyes,
a warbling wail
and a kink at the end
of his very long tail.

He was cheeky and cheerful,
friendly and fun,
he’d chase after leaves
and he’d roll in the sun.

But at night he was wicked
and fiendish and sly.
Through moonlight and shadow
he’d prowl and he’d pry.

Listen to the full poem (picture book) with Ems Storytime ….

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Poetry-Picture Matching

Backstory to Poetry-Picture Matching

This post, inspired by primary teachers who joined me during those two workshops, is a recap of one of the activities we did, an activity to build background knowledge, introduce rich vocabulary, and provide descriptive models during our discussion about prewriting … using poetry.

I planned to use the general topic “cats” to model our how-to-write lessons teaching the writing process in my How To Write workshop.

I had gathered resources to use during for the research part in prewriting: photographs, picture books, poems, and articles about cats. Pixabay was a great source for photos. The shelves of my personal library provided a good sampling of picture books, including a copy of Slinky Malinki. A quick internet search turned up several articles with interesting cat facts. And Rainy Day Poems had a selection of cat poems.

Poetry-Picture Matching spans all reading levels and age levels; it works well with mixed age and ability groups. It is a springboard for much rich discussion. It also encourages students to make connections between images and print. And the poetry is usually loaded with delicious words in short text lines.

Preparation is relatively easy as long as you have access to the internet, to a printer, and of course, to books — personal library, school library, public library, online.

Cat Playing Cards

I selected a dozen cat poems. Then I selected cat photos from Pixabay that could go with at least one of the poems. I selected 24 photos because I wanted one cat card per student in the classroom. With the photos, I created cat playing cards.

How I created the cat playing cards:
Since we often use cards in other activities and subjects, I will share how I created them. I searched for online photos. Using the photos I had selected, I created a Keynote (Mac) slide presentation. I used one cat photo per slide, filling as much of the slide as possible. I numbered each slide in the upper right hand corner. Then, using the print feature, I created a printable document of the slide show with the “grid” option for six slides per page and set my page orientation to portrait. Optional: laminate the sheets. Cut the cards apart.

Here are my 24 cat picture cards.

Poems

I found the cat poems at Rainy Day Poems. Here is a list of the poems that go with the Cat Picture Cards:

“The Cat of Cats” by William Brighty Rands
“Cats” by Eleanor Farjeon
“At Night” by Aileen Fisher
“Kitty in the Basket” by Eliza Le Follen
“The House Cat” by Annette Wynne
“The Milk Jug” by Oliver Herford
“The Game” by Oliver Herford
“Cat” by Mary Britton Miller
“Two Little Kittens” by Jane Taylor
“The Shadow Kitten” by Oliver Herford (When I read this one, I don’t read the title because it was a spoiler.)
“The Kitten at Play” by William Wordsworth

Two Examples of Poetry-Poem Matches

Preparation Steps

1. Print: the cat picture cards that I share in a 4-page pdf; color printing is best.
2. Select cat poems from the list linked here. You could read the poems from the screen, but I prefer a printing hard copy because we like to note special words later in the lesson; also I like to add the poems to our reading library in a basket or a binder.
3. Cut the 24 cat pictures cards apart. (Optional: Laminate before you cut them apart.)

Activity Directions

1. Students gather in a circle.
2. Each child receives at least one cat card.
3. Students close their eyes and visualize while the teacher reads the poem or a stanza of a poem.
4. Students open their eyes and each one looks at his/her card as teacher reads poem or stanza again. Students do not talk as teacher reads; they are listening, looking, thinking to determine if their card matches (illustrates) the poem.
5. Students share their cards if they think they have a match; teacher guides student talk supporting card selections — how the images in a picture support the ideas created by the words of the poem.

Suggestions for Homeschool Setting

There are 12 poems listed, so you could easily do the activity three times each week for the four weeks of April — National Poetry Month. This is a great activity for all ages and ability levels working together. It also works with a single student.

1. Spread the 24 cat cards out on a table.
2. Students gather around the table.
3. Students close their eyes and visualize while poem is read.
4. Students open their eyes and look at the cards as the poem is read again. Students are not touching the cards. Students are not talking. They are listening, looking, and thinking to determine which card(s) might match or illustrate the poem.
5. Parent then guides “student talk” to support their card selections — how the images in a picture support the ideas created by the words of the poem.

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Postscript:
What can I do with the cards and poems after we complete Poetry-Picture Matching?

After you have had fun doing this whole group poetry-picture match game, there are dozens of other possibilities for the cat poems and cat picture cards.

• Use the picture cards as a prompts for sentence writing, poetry writing, or story writing.
• Use the cards and poems for matching activities in a station /center using lines or a stanza from the poems (instead of whole poem) to match with pictures (learning goal: engaging with mentor text, visualizing, making meaning).
• Sort the picture cards by descriptive characteristics (learning goal: noticing details).
• Use the poems for Copywork, the whole poem or selected lines from the poem could be the text students copy in their Commonplace Journal. [Note: I will write more about copywork and commonplace journaling in another post.]
• Place each poem in sheet protector and put it in a reading library. It can be in a basket of loose reading material. Or it can be in a notebook of loose reading material. Students enjoy reading the poems again.
• Use one of the poems as a mentor text for imitation, i.e., craft a poem about a different animal that mimics the mentor text in structure and style.
• Use poems to find examples of literary devices, i.e., metaphor, simile, imagery, personification, hyperbole, onomatopoeia, pun, alliteration, rhyming, assonance. allusion, meter, repetition.

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