In the blog Hello Literacy posted on October 23,
2012 Jones talks about focus poetry. She
provided resources from a book by Julie Ballew entitled, “Top Teaching” through
scholastic. You can find all the resources on the blog if you are interested in learning more about the lessons! Julie talks about focus
poetry and how to integrate it into your classroom. Focus poetry is a “program of shared reading
and provides multiple opportunities to teach a wide variety of skills in a
short amount of time each day.” Below is the template she uses for the lessons. She will put up a poem and the students will go through the template and analyze/ write about the poem and what it means to them.
She also posted some cute bulletin board pieces to go along with the lesson.
Focus poetry integrates writing and language arts as well as a different form of writing. Another way to extend this lesson would be to have the students create their own poems and have their classmates analyze them. I hope you enjoy and check out the post for more resources about focus poetry!
Jenny also wrote about Focus Poetry. It sounds like a great strategy. Do you think you will use it in your classroom?
ReplyDeleteDr. Sprague
Yes, I think I would use this in my classroom because it provides a different way of writing as well as getting the students to analyze poetry. It seems like it would be beneficial and it does not take long to implement.
ReplyDeleteHey Becky,
ReplyDeleteI had never heard of focus poetry. Thank you so much for blogging about it and bringing it to my attention, as well as providing the pictures on your post. I have done a few shared reading in my classroom and they have all been poetry for the most part, so I wonder if I've been doing this all semester and not even known it. Upon further investigation, I don't think I have on a very basic level given I'm working with kindergarteners. This does seem to happen in my classroom, just in a limited and not as individual based way. My students will analyze the poetry by looking for all the things you mentioned, but they just find and frame most of the things. I love your suggestion of having students write their own poetry and having others look over it. This seems like an even better way to incorporate even more language arts into the lesson. Wonderful job! Alexa