Poem of the Week…A Three Part Series PART TWO

In Part One, I talked about how I’ve been doing a poem or song of the week for my entire teaching career (mostly First Grade) and I gave the basics of where this fits into my day and how it works in my classroom.
If you missed anything, check out
Part One-The “Who, What, When, Where, Why, How” of Poem of the Week!

Today, brings us to Part Two-The Daily Activities for the Poem of the Week! I’ll tell you about the activities that we do each day during the week.

We work on each poem for one week, Monday through Friday, and the kids are always very excited to find out what the new poem will be!

Monday-Meet Your New Poem

I bring out the new chart and read the title. Then, we read through the poem the first time.

I always give students the option of listening to me the first time and not reading…some are more comfortable hearing it first. After that, we all read through it together.

Sometimes, we read through it a third time. That’s about it for Monday! We dive into discussions on Tuesday, so unless someone has a really pressing question, we save it for chat time on Tuesday. This is a quick introduction and gives them something to think about as we start our new week.

This “Back to School” Poem is part of my
August Poem of the Week Pack

Tuesday-Read and Chat

On Tuesday, I review the title. We read through the poem once together to refresh our memory.

From there, we discuss new or interesting vocabulary words, clarify any confusing parts, ask questions, and just have a general discussion of anything they may be thinking or wondering about this poem.

After that, we read it one or two more times.

Wednesday-Word Work

Wednesday is our “word work” day. On this day, depending on our current classroom focus, we work with the words.

At the beginning of first grade, this may be talking about initial sounds, finding word wall/high frequency words, discussing rhymes, clapping out syllables, etc.
Later on, we may focus more on phonics “chunks”/word families, synonyms, inflectional endings, shades of meaning, long and short vowel sounds, and more.

This is the day we may use a dry erase marker to circle, underline, and/or add new words to our poem. If we’ve written any synonyms or alternate words on our chart, we often read the poem again and students can choose their own word from our brainstorming session.
This is a good day to explore some of your own standards as they fit into the poem.

Rhyming words circled for
Word Work Wednesday

Thursday-Fluency Fun

This is our “fluency fun” day! On this day, we read the poem in funny voices, practice reading it fast/slow or loud/quiet, really focus on expression and punctuation, or break into groups and take turns reading alternate lines.

Students may volunteer to lead the class with the teacher pointer or sometimes a student volunteers to read it aloud all alone. We do some “whole brain” hand motions for capitals and punctuation on this day as well.

Some fun fluency ideas…

Read alternating lines in a whisper and then a loud voice or very slowly, then very quickly
Break class into two groups (or more)…then each group reads alternating lines
Over-exaggerate expression based on punctuation
Read with a crescendo…getting louder each line…or decrescendo…getting quieter each line
Shout out the rhyming words, word wall words, words that start with a certain sound, etc.
Funny voices…crying, laughing, sad, happy, mad, ghost, opera singing, out-of-breath, daddy-mommy-baby voices, and so on!
Kiddos can come up with some pretty funny ones, too!

Friday-Read and Respond Day

Friday is Response Day! We read the poem one or two more times. The response portion looks different throughout the year in first grade.
At the beginning of the year with my first graders, we have a final discussion about the poem.

We use response starter stems to orally share our feelings and/or ideas about the poem. Students share with their partner and I have a few share aloud if they would like.

We use these for both oral and written responses.
Available in my
**Poem of the Week Products**

Then, students head to their working area. They reread it independently, and make a picture (read on for additional response ideas) to go with it. Sometimes, kids like to highlight the word wall/high frequency words with a yellow crayon.
Later in the year, (usually after we return from winter break), students are expected to complete a written response, but you could start this earlier if your students are ready.

We glue the response starter stems into their journal to use as a guide. They’re already familiar with the starter stems because we use them during discussions starting at the beginning of the year. Students can write a short one or two sentence response, while others choose to write more. Students add an illustration or highlight words within the poem when they are finished with their writing.

That’s it…our day-by-day activities for the Poem of the Week! 🙂 I hope you’ve found this post useful. Any questions or comments? Let me know in the comments. Thanks!

Click HERE for more information about Response Activities in Part 3 of this series!