By regularly celebrating poetry in the classroom, you can transform your students into more enlightened readers and writers. Light verse is defined as “poetry that is playful or humorous and usually rhymed.” If we extend the umbrella of “light verse” to include poetry like that found in the work of the late Shel Silverstein where the sidewalk ends Prayed Fall tothat is full of quirks, surprise rhymes, and free verse, then light verse becomes music to the soul of most students.
Children love poetry books by Shel Silverstein, Jack Prelutsky, Judith Viorst, Bruce Lansky, Jeff Moss, and Kalli Dakoa. At first glance, his poems seem easy to write. Just pick a subject, any subject from apples to zebras, and write a poem. You don’t have to worry too much about the rhyme scheme, as long as the words make sense and sound good when you read them.
Oh yes, in writing these poems, poets draw a lot from the palette of their essential tools: similes, metaphors, alliteration, onomatopoeia. Of course, whether the poet is a professional or a student, it will take more than one session or one class period to finish a polished poem, one worth publishing. Light verse, in the hands of those who love it, is a labor of love. A lot of time will be spent choosing the most suitable words, metaphors and.
When done right, light verse is lightning pours. Fissure! Nap! Fissure! The words come out of the writer’s mind, activated by the teacher as a literary guide to poems about feelings, emotions and more. Words are enthusiastically written that tell a little story or humorously communicate the joys and challenges of being a child. For example, this is from Image poetry on parade! “My ABC Riddle”:
My ABC’s are sticky.
My ABC’s are disgusting.
My ABC is full of germs.
My ABC’s are a janitor’s nightmare.
My ABC’s are on the desks,
Chairs, floors and more.
my alphabet,
you guessed
them for now?
I bet you have –
HASit is done B.een againstbubble gum
Good poetry sticks to our dendrites, and we never forget characters like Hector the Collector or Silverstein’s Captain Hook, or what it’s like to be in class with Gloria de Lansky, who has a big pimple.
When I taught third and fourth grades, I used light verse to open my bedroom door to the wonderful world of poetry and writing. I had many students who couldn’t wait to have me as a teacher because they had heard through the grapevine or from their older brother that the kids in my class he had it easy. The kids in my class wrote “short things,” meaning polished poems. And they had “long breaks,” meaning a few extra minutes of oxygen on the playground after lunch. Each year they came with high hopes of short stuff and more oxygen, and I never let them down. They earned those extra breaths of fresh air by writing their hearts out in the classroom.
Oh how their eyes sparkled when they realized that this teacher only had two things on the immediate agenda: poems and recess! And everyone was welcome, “including liars and magic bean buyers!” They instantly knew this was going to be a special year.
What they didn’t know was that they were going to write and write, while learning to appreciate good children’s literature, prose, and poetry. Light verse was not only used on the first day to reduce the nervousness of the first day. It was used to start the wheel of poetry of good fortune and teaching. We each write our “Name Poem” in acrostics and illustrate them with magic markers. We then introduced ourselves and our poems to the class while becoming part of an extended family of happy poets and learners.
The nerves of the first day disappeared, promises were kept and the love of learning kicked in.