Theories & Practice
Teachers,
You will find in this section the theory and the practices of our k-poetry approach. It is in constant development both in its content and format.
Rationale: Initial research & purpose of the K-poets website
Arts & literacy: Why pair arts & poetry?
Reasearch based: Why the school of ECE supports research-based literacy instruction
Balanced literacy model: Meaning behind balanced-literacy
Language & literacy: Theories behind the value of pairing language and literacy
Poetry preformance: Importance for children to recite poetry
Once a rarefied part of the school system and of the child care system, poetry is increasingly integrated into curricula, providing an invaluable stimulus to help children to read, write and increasingly perform. Where once it was thought of as difficult for young children to write and to understand, poetry is now researched and implemented by eager teachers.
One factor that has contributed of this change is that today's poetry for young children is often not at all like the classic poems which were compiled in anthologies until the 1970s by adult who tought that the themes could be of interest to children. Too often those poems had a too formal construction and spoke remotely of young children's emotions, feelings and experience and children's sense of humour. Fortunately, some poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, and the non-sensical poems of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear have composed that reached young children and lead a trend in new forms of poetry for children. Also the scientfic knowledge in children's cognitive, language and emotional and social development (including children's sense of humour) have signaled to a new generation of poets to write poems about children's them. everyday stories and subjects - pets, families, transport, messy bedroom, birtrhdays, hair, and feelings. The trend started in the 1960s. Michael Rosen, a pioneer published his first book in 1974,
Public performances of poetry in schools and other venues such as bookstores and libraries also took poetry off the shelves and out in live performances.
Similarly, young children, even the ones who are real beginning writers, are encouraged to write their own poems, Proud parents and teachers post them in schools and on the internet like we are doing it here at k-poets. Teachers also who may have had a bad experience with poetry when they were students themselves, are rediscovering poetry. Risk-taking teachers composed their own poems to model poetry writing to their children.
The k-poetry learning activities that have been tested at the Ryerson Early Learning Centre are based on this rationale. They are not prescriptive but rather general guidelines and can be used either as in-depth lessons or mini-lessons.
Literacy engagements can be aesthetic experiences when writing becomes a response across multiple sign systems such as music, dance and visual arts.(Berghoff, 1998). This combination is the most likely mode to release children's imagination. For instance, visual arts give the opportunities to children to access to a different form of gazing, similar to the poetic experience. As argued by Stanley (2004) voice, music, movement and artistic expression, the teaching of reading brings the learner into a third dimension by making him or her more relax and actively engaged in the learning process.
Through our experiments in the Early Learning Centre, we have found a learning sequence that works very well. At first, the teacher reads the poem a few times using a voice that conveys feelings and emotions. Then she/he models and solicits ways to respond to it either through movements or drawings. One of activity that we have tested and be successful with was to show a painting from Van Gogh, Chagall or Miro (both favourite painting of young children), architecture by Gaudi, and then the children group-compose a poem to express their emotions and their feelings that arise from watching those paintings. This is more difficult for children than expressing a literal understanding of the poem, therefore the teachers ought to scaffold the process through modeling and prompting. Always close the activity by posting the art work surrounded by the children-composed poems(s).
A variation of this activity would be to compare different illustrations of the same poems. The children of the ELC have mostly excited by looking at different versions of The Owl and the Pussycat.
One of our most interesting and successful activity has been to combine photography and poetry. As our children were increasingly interested and familiar with the digital camera that the researcher was using to collect data, it came naturally to the children to ask to not only to look at their pictures but also wanted to use the camera. So one day, we decided to go outside and take photos of their shadows reflected on the snow. Click! "My Shadow" by Robert Louis Robertson was our natural partner. Shadow .
Considering that drama activities are central to language and literacy development, it is therefore essential to connect poetry with dance and mouvement. At first many teachers are not comfortable in modeling and prompting children but it is our experience at the ELC that drama and poetry can be natural partners if the poems are selected for performances (voices, characters, actions) then everyone enjoy the activity. The Owl and The Pussycat.
Learning activities tested in the Early Learning Centre are based on a growing number of studies on early literacy development. These are mostly longitudinal studies which suggest that for preschool children, letter knowledge and phonological awareness are powerful predictors of reading accuracy (namely word recognition skills)at this age. Other skills such as rhyme skills, vocabulary, and grammar skills are less associated to word recognition skills in preschoolers. These skills may, however, have an effect on later literacy development as children develop an awareness of the relationship between spoken words and the orthography. (Muter, Hulme, Snowling, & Stevenson, 2004; Lonigan, Burgess 2000; Muter, Hulme, Snowling, & Stevenson, 1998; Casalis & Alexander, 2000; Anthony, Lonigan, Christopher, 2004; Anthony, Stephen, Driscoll, Philips, Cantor; (2002); Byrne, B. (2002).References
The main reason that poems are essentially used for those in-depth or mini-lessons is that early readers read with more ease in familiar contexts such as poems. Those texts have been specifically been composed or chosen because they have repetitions, alliterations and rhymes.
The success of those in-depth or mini-lessons require that the teacher reads the same poem twice a day for three days in a row. This helps children to become familiar with the text and memorize it.
The pendulum of literacy instruction models has shifted in both directions: contrived learning, Whole Language, and now it's Balanced Literacy. The latter model coalesce formal instruction and experiential learning. It takes into consideration the differences in learning styles and learners' needs (boys, girls, children with special needs, Second Language Learners). In relation to content, phonics are back but are taught in meaningful contexts e,g stories, poems, journals, posters, or reports. Literacy instruction is also paired with other curriculum areas such as science, math, social studies, giving it a greater purpose.
For the moment, this model appears to work quite well because more longitudinal studies are informing us on how children are learning to read (see next paragraph), which instructional methods work better over time. Also research in child development is providing us with a greater understanding on how language development, cognition and language development influence children's literacy development. Not lesser to those are the research on the impact of family and cultural conditions namely in parenting skills, economic conditions, literacy activities, valorization of storytelling, read aloud poetry, and the traditions of for instance poetry.
Combining the best classroom practices and research on teaching reading and language acquisition, this section presents wonderful poems and effective in-depth lessons and mini-lessons that emphasize the importance of constantly listening for and assessing children’s language and reading strategies during read aloud, shared reading, guided reading, and independent reading, including literature circles. Some lessons encourage teachers to help children memorize poems, providing they are done in a fun way. Poetry Memorization Poetry, Memorization , Alliteration Poetry, and Oral Language.
Our learning activities demonstrate whole-class, small-group, and individual reading instruction using a model of "reading to, with, and by children" with poetry texts. Those procedures will assist-teachers in supporting children's in all stages of English language development and at all developmental reading levels. Teachers will have to assess regularly those interactions, and plan for more effective instruction.
Children's poetry performance is no longer a controversy because recent research that have established that memorization and performance of poetry not only foster the development of cognition but are also indicative of children's comprehension of the poems by the way they phrase and deliver it. A note of caution here: poetry recitation should never become memory tests; it must ve a voluntary exercise, must remain fun, age appropriate and be introduced gradually to the children.
To help children perform poetry we found that first the kindergarten teacher needs to perform poetry with great expression for weeks and months. Then proceed to the well know procedures of teacher's read aloud at least twice with great expression, shared reading, guided reading in groups (a.k.a. echo reading), and short individual and voluntary performance. We have found that the children of the ELC sometimes burst spontaneously into choral chanting as they walk toward the gym or in front a visitor. Honey has been our first success. Then the chorus of Four Fur Feet launch a series of other great performances.
The selection of poems for performance can be daunting. We found in the ELC that poems with interesting sounds, strong rhythm, rhymes, alliterations assonances, two voices, have allot of dialogues, have short stanzas, have a real character, or tell a complete story, and have a theme that young children can relate to, are natural for poetry performance. The lyrics of songs such as Mary Mack, and rhyming stories could also serve this purpose.
Guest performance is also a motivating tool for children's poetry performance. This is even more powerful when the guest recited poems about their role as parents, teachers, cat lover and dog walker. Poetry recites by guests also shows to the children that poetry is part of everyones life, not just the teacher and the children.
Celebrate special occasions (birthdays, first snow, the arrival of a new baby), Halloween, walking in the rain, monster under the bed) by reciting poems also brings poetry to daily life.
