We posed a question to David Harrison, why poetry?
Ask a poet, “Why poetry?” the response may be a surprised look, the sort you’d expect if you’d asked, “Why do you breathe?” Perhaps it’s better to ask, “Why poets?” Who are these passionately dedicated people who throw themselves into the slow, tedious business of making poems? Good poetry is hard to write, selling poetry is next to impossible, and poets rarely make much money. So why poetry, why poets, and why should you care?
I can’t speak for other poets (although I bet they’d all answer in much the same way), but I love the challenge of beginning with an idea and facing all those decisions that must be made before I wind up with a finished poem. In music, the same notes in different combinations produce jazz, Dixieland, blues, marches, and symphonic works. In poetry, the same words in different combinations produce a marvelous variety of verse. Most days I work twelve hours, much of it writing poetry. I’m a freelance writer. No one is going to pay me if I don’t produce. Few would care or notice if I stopped. I work alone. If I spend hours trying to decide between one rhyme or another, struggling with a stubborn meter, seeking a stronger noun, searching desperately for just the right simile – who cares? Well, first of all, I care. No poet worth his salt is ever going to stop working on a poem until he reads it aloud one more time and loves what he hears.
Ask a teacher who has learned that poetry is one of the best tools in the toolbox for teaching fluency, comprehension, vocabulary, and love of language, “Why poetry?” You might hear, “Couldn’t do without it!” At least I hope that’s what you hear! Teachers who routinely use poetry in their classrooms know that the rhymes and cadences of structured language make it easier to remember than prose and more fun to read repeatedly. Teachers who invite their students to write poems of their own know that children’s poetry offers a wonderful opportunity to share the rich diversity of our people.
But someone else cares too. Ask a third grader who has had positive experiences with poetry at home and/or school, “Why poetry?” You might hear, “I like poems. Sometimes they’re funny and they make me laugh.” What that third grader or first grader or fifth grader doesn’t realize is that poetry’s nuances, metaphors, echoing sounds, song-like qualities, rhymes, and cadences are providing much more than entertainment. Young readers have no idea how hard the poet worked to make them laugh or think or see something in a new light or provide them with examples of language used beautifully. Why should they? It’s their right to read good poems.
Why poetry? Ask a poet or a teacher if you want to. I’m going with the third grader.
I once asked a second-grade boy if Reader’s Theater made him a better reader, and he responded, “No, because it’s fun.” He was a reluctant reader, but he loved the interaction during rehearsal and entertaining his peers during the performance. So, I suppose he was a reluctant silent reader but loved reading aloud with his friends and classmates. You could tell he enjoyed it more than any other activity because he was always smiling when he rehearsed and performed.
Regardless of what this second grader thought, Reader’s Theater was helping him become a better reader, which is also true for many other students. Research says that Reader’s Theater is an excellent way to improve reading fluency, comprehension, vocabulary, and confidence (Millin & Rinehart, 1999; Young et al., 2019). Improving these combined aspects of reading results in an increase in overall reading achievement. A recent meta-analysis found that Reader’s Theater has a large impact on students’ reading proficiency (Mastrothanasis et al., 2023). So, I encourage you to give it a try.
Reader’s Theater is essentially a group of students who dramatically read a text for an audience. All you need are some kids, a few scripts, and five to ten minutes per day. Although there are many ways to implement Readers Theater in your classroom, I will share a method that worked well for my second graders and me. Feel free to adapt the following to meet the needs of your students and unique teaching style.
Selecting Scripts reading skills I use a five-day format that helps students prepare for our weekly performances. Each day our rehearsals focus on different aspects of reading; we begin the week with decoding and end the week with fluent, expressive reading.
Before the week begins, I select three to six different scripts for the students to choose from. The number of scripts depends on your class size and the number of parts in each script. The scripts are usually based on popular novels, but I also include nonfiction, poetry, or speeches. In fact, I even use scripts from movies, such as A Christmas Story—the students really enjoy performing the “flagpole” scene.
While you can turn almost anything into a Reader’s Theater script, my website has over 200 free ready-to-download from www.thebestclass.org. Of course, once students become comfortable with Reader’s Theater, I encourage them to write their own scripts based on my read-alouds or books they’ve read. Teachers can also write scripts to match their students’ interests or topics in content areas. The key is to provide scripts that you think your students will love and enjoy performing.
Five-Day Format Teaching Reading Skills
On Monday, I read the scripts to my students, and they form groups based on their choice of script. At that time, I ask students to read the entire script and think about the overall meaning of the text.
On Tuesday, the students choose their parts. It is a little chaotic in the beginning of the year, but remember, Rock, Paper, Scissors solves everything. So, when your wonderful little people begin to argue over parts, break those hands out and try your luck at a best out of three matches.
After the students select and highlight their parts, we focus on decoding and word recognition accuracy; I make sure that students know all the sounds and words and that they can pronounce them accurately and automatically.
On Wednesday, we focus on expression—often referred to as prosody. The students practice reading expressively by calibrating their voice inflection, tone, volume, pitch and pauses for dramatic effect.
Students need a deep understanding of the script to render expressiveness that matches the author’s intended meaning. I offer assistance and also encourage the students to coach each other with the goal of producing appropriate prosody.
On Thursday, we have a practice performance. It is a time for any last-minute tweaks or suggestions from the teacher or peers. When students need additional assistance with their parts, I meet with them one-on-one and choose from a variety of interventions such as echo reading, repeated reading, or choral reading. The goal is to ensure that every student sounds great during the performance.
Once the students and I feel they are ready, we look forward to the last day of the five-day format: performance day. By this time, the students have engaged in daily rehearsals, which is an artful and authentic synonym for repeated reading.
Substantial research exists that promotes the method of repeated readings, and Reader’s Theater research acknowledges the power of practice but also includes a purpose—we believe that if you are going to read a text repeatedly, there better be a good reason. That reason is the performance.
On Friday, we perform. But first, it is important to secure an audience. You can invite parents, other classes, administrators, and other school staff, or take your show on the road!
Tips for Successful Reader’s Theater Teaching Reading Skills Here are a few recommendations that I’ve curated from experience.
Use challenging texts; they have plenty of support and time to rehearse.
Use challenging texts for another reason; I do not want students to memorize the texts; I want them to read their parts.
Select texts based on what your students will enjoy performing and will also engage the audience.
Incorporate daily activities related to decoding, vocabulary development, and expressive reading. I, along with Faida Stokes and Tim Rasinski, wrote an article for The Reading Teacher in 2017 titled “Reader’s Theater Plus Comprehension and Word Study,” which has daily activities beyond rehearsal that you can access and review.
Set a timer for rehearsals each day, allowing for at least two rehearsals.
Tell students there are no props or costumes. You don’t want a student to show up dressed like a farmer or an astronaut on Friday.
Find an audience. If you cannot, go to the front desk; someone is always there willing to attend.
Print extra scripts because students often lose them.
Some Interesting Results
There are many studies that suggest Reader’s Theater is an effective reading activity, but I’d like to share the results of one in particular. A study we conducted (Young et al., 2019) showed that Reader’s Theater had a profound impact on boys. The three pretest measures—decoding, word knowledge, and comprehension—revealed a gap in favor of the girls. By the end of the study, that gap had closed. We were shocked at these unexpected results but also excited to share that we found something that might help boost reading achievement among boys. An analysis of the survey revealed that most boys liked Reader’s Theater because of the interaction and humor and because it was a novel activity.
Conclusion Teaching Reading Skills Readers Theater is a lot of fun (my students and I can attest to that). But more importantly, it can improve many aspects of their reading, including reading fluency. Fluent readers do not have to focus on decoding as much and, therefore, can redirect their attention to reading comprehension, which is the main goal of reading.
So, download some scripts, prepare your little thespians, and integrate the science and art of reading instruction into your classroom.
References
Mastrothanasis, K., Maria Kladaki, M., Aphrodite Andreou, A. (2023). A systematic review and meta-analysis of the Readers’ Theatre impact on the development of reading skills. International Journal of Educational Research Open, 4, 100243.
Millin, S. K., & Rinehart, S. D. (1999). Some of the benefits of readers theater participation for second‐grade title I students. Literacy Research and Instruction, 39(1), 71-88. Doi: 10.1080/19388079909558312
Young, C., Durham, P., Miller, M., Rasinski, T., & Lane, F. (2019). Improving reading comprehension with readers theater. Journal of Educational Research, 112(5), 615-626.
Young, C., Stokes, F., & Rasinski, T. (2017). Readers Theater plus comprehension and word study. Reading Teacher, 71(3), 351-355.
It’s All About the Books: How to Create Bookrooms and Classroom Libraries That Inspire Readers (2018, 21), authors Landrigan and Mulligan state, “The classroom library is the home of the class’ reading community . . . . Its primary role is building a literacy community in each classroom and ensuring that each student is a member” (21).
Classroom Libraries are Essential
A classroom library is often the hub of the classroom. According to the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), “All students must be able to access, use, and evaluate information in order to meet the needs and challenges of the twenty-first century….Reading in all its dimensions – informational, purposeful, and recreational – promotes students’ overall academic success and well-being.(Position Statements: Statement on Classroom Libraries, 2017).” Books are often arranged in easy-to-navigate categories such as favorite authors, fiction and nonfiction, genres, themes, and topics that relate to across-the-content area reading. Shelves are arranged to showcase books students want to read and ones the teacher has researched and knows will meet the needs of the readers in the classroom. A well-stocked classroom library will give all students access to relevant, engaging texts (fiction and nonfiction) and magazines that represent their diverse identities and reading tastes.
The Top Ten Benefits of Classroom Libraries
Students’ motivation and engagement increases by encouraging voluntary and recreational reading in school and outside the school setting.
A wide range of reading materials that reflect reading abilities and interests of the class is at your students’ fingertips.
Choice in self-selecting reading materials for self-engagement is a key factor.
Enhanced opportunities for assigned and recreational reading encourage students to bookshop often.
Immediate access to texts will keep reading a top priority in the classroom community.
Classroom libraries can personalize book choice that reflects the students’ favorite authors, interests, and genres within the classroom.
Teachers can curate the library to introduce new authors and genres with a comprehensive assortment of books that support individual reading, book club reading, inquiry projects, and classroom discussions about current topics in our students’ world outside of school.
By having a voice in what materials will be in the library as well as how the library is organized and arranged, students have myriad opportunities to create a space for books within their classroom they want to use and will use.
As books are weeded and replaced, these books become available for students to select and keep. Book ownership often increases reader engagement and skills. Having books in the home is an important part of raising and sustaining a student’s reading identity.
Reading widely and often builds students’ vocabulary and background knowledge, giving them a chance to use their reading strategies to make meaning of texts across the curriculum.
A Classroom Library Collection Reflects the Community Members
Texts can provide a sense of belonging for all students. When books reflect the cultures and experiences of the readers in your classroom, they provide a welcome experience and allow readers to connect to what they are reading on a more personal level. When the books in our libraries are inclusive and socially conscious, students develop awareness, empathy, and compassion for others by learning about cultures and customs they may not experience in their own community. Books can also create opportunities to celebrate cultures and experiences that are like and different from their own. If classroom libraries contain books that reflect the world we live in, students have the opportunity to see themselves as a part of this world, learning how to navigate and participate in a global community. Listen to Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop talk about windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors here: Mirrors, Windows and Sliding Glass Doors
Curating a classroom library that is timely and relevant takes time and effort on your part. Websites such as We Need Diverse Books, Colorin Colorado, and Jane Addams Peace Association are three places to start. Be sure to use NCTE’s journals (Language Arts and Voices from the Middle) and ILA’s The Reading Teacher, which regularly highlight new texts. An important resource will also be your school and local librarian, but always try to be the first reader of books you add to your classroom collection.
How to Highlight the Books in Your Library
Highlighting the books within your library will build an excitement for more books in your library. As the teacher you can promote books you think your students will enjoy based on what you know about the readers in your classroom and your knowledge of new titles. Getting students to promote a favorite book can ignite an excitement for a title, book series, genre, or topic that will ensure the book is read by their peers.
Book Blurbs written by students and placed inside the front covers of books are often a welcome surprise. Students share their opinions as well as a short blurb on a 3×5 card and place the recommendation/blurb inside the front cover. Students sign their work. This allows readers to share ideas and discuss the text later. Students can also place sticky notes directly on the cover with a short recommendation (i.e. If you like eerie books that will keep you awake at night, you have to read this book!)
Consider creating a “if you liked this book… try this next…” shelf. This allows students who enjoyed a genre or series the opportunity to try something similar yet different. It can help expand the readers’ reading repertoire and help build new reading interests. Your school librarian can help you gather books and can give you newer titles.
Book Talks given by students introduce books and create an excitement for reading. Research by Williams and MacDonald (2017) shows that peer recommendation is a powerful way to get kids to read. Welcome to Reading Workshop: Structures and Routines that Support All Readers offers examples and formats you can use to help students book talk in your classroom.
Book Reviews can be modeled by the teacher and simply displayed on a bulletin board or on the class website. Students can write a review for extra credit or in place of certain assignments that are designated by you as possibilities where students can substitute a book review. Some students may choose to post a review on Amazon, GoodReads, or other public venues.
Creating special displays once a month to spotlight an author, new books, a specific genre, or a specific topic. Here’s a chance to highlight books to grab your students’ attention. Nonfiction displays are valuable – highlight books about climate change, space travel, and immigration.
Supporting Summer Reading with Your Library
Reading is probably the most important thing kids can do in the summer. There are many summer reading programs offered by local public libraries. There are summer reading camps and online summer reading programs, too. So, how can you help your students continue to read over their vacation in ways that other programs may not be able to do?
First of all, no one knows your students better than you do. Build summer readers by helping them choose a book from your classroom library that they cannot possibly put down. To accomplish this task, make sure your library collection has multiple copies so best friends can both choose to sign out the same book. Your library should be home to many series books. What happens when you read the first book of a series and love it? Will you look for the sequel? Reading books in a series helps students be successful. They get to know the characters, how they react, how the plot goes, and all that knowledge helps them read the next book, and the one after that. Before they know it, they’ve polished off two or three books. Wow! Encourage students to form summer book clubs and partnerships – The Hunger Games, The Maze Runner, Harry Potter. Sometimes, a benefit to a series may be that there’s a movie or two about the book. A summer movie night after the book is read – possibly to be enjoyed by family and/or friends!
Help your students set a goal for summer reading before the end of the school year. Perhaps some students want to explore a new genre such as science fiction or poetry. Some students may set a goal pertaining to how many books they read or how many minutes per day will be devoted to reading. You can provide easy access by creating a sign-out system and letting your students choose one, two, or more books to take home over the summer.
Final Thoughts
A classroom library can be the hub of your community. It has the potential to buzz with excitement when books are carefully chosen and strategically displayed. So often, it seems like the teacher is the curator/owner of the space. Yet when we hand over the responsibility to our students, the space becomes something they own and want to use. Inviting students to suggest book titles based on their interests and expertise will help diversify your collection. Letting students create spaces around the classroom to display books and organize and label the shelves in a meaningful way for them will help your library appeal to the entire community. A library is more than just a corner of books; it can be a place to sit and quietly read for research purposes or pleasure. Ask your students to help design a space they would find comfortable and inviting.
Stop and Reflect:
Is your library being used? Do students utilize the classroom library to get reading material for pleasure? For research?
What steps can you take to make your classroom library a place students want to use?
The world is full of patterns. When we see a red octagonal sign while driving, we immediately think, “STOP!” Football fans can instantly recognize the shape of a goalpost and know what it’s used for. And when we hear the melody to a familiar song (think “Wheels on the Bus’ or “The Star-Spangled Banner”), we immediately recall the words. If you have a dog or cat at home, you are probably attuned to the pattern of the barks and mews. Indeed, look around the room in which you are in right now, and your are likely to see many patterns—from the way the ceiling tiles or lights are arranged to the way the classroom desks are arranged, or to the pattern of the quilt covering the couch.
Patterns can be defined as a regular and repeated arrangements of shapes, letters, lines, numbers, colors, and sounds that can serve as guides. As human beings, we are predisposed to detect patters in our environments. Our ability to see, hear, feel, and identify patterns makes our lives safer, easier to negotiate, and more productive.
Besides the types just mentioned, linguistic patterns can be used in teaching reading and writing. Of course, the letters of the alphabet and phonemes they represent are among the first patterns we teach children. Interestingly enough, we often teach the letters to young children with a song—The Alphabet Song—which itself is a patterned text.
However, there are many other patterns that can be used in teaching reading—patterns that can make learning more productive and more efficient for students. In this blog, I will share a few that I found to be very helpful in teaching children to read in the Kent State University reading clinic: Camp Read-A-Lot.
Help Students See Word Patterns: Phonemic Word Families/Phonograms/Rimes
One of the most widely used linguistic patterns taught in the primary grades are the phonemic word families—also known as phonograms or rimes. A phonemic word family is a part of the syllable that begins with the vowel (every syllable by definition needs to have a vowel or vowel combination) and all other letters that follow the vowel represent a regular or consistent set of phonemes or language sounds. For example, -each in ”teach”, and the –ent in the second syllable of “student” are word families. The significance of word families is that they are regularly occurring letter patterns that represent regularly occurring sound patterns. Not only does knowledge of –each help a developing reader decode the word “teach,” but it can also help students decode “beach, breach, peach, preach, reach” and even longer, more complex words: “preacher, teachable.” Indeed, in a seminal article, Dr. Edward Fry identified thirty-eight-word families, knowledge of which allows readers to decode over 650 single-syllable words. Moreover, the number of multisyllabic words that can be decoded from knowledge of these letter patterns is in the thousands. For example, the word family –am finds its way into ambulance, camera, family, hamster, and many more.
If we have this natural ability to see patterns, why not use them with students in our teaching of phonics and word decoding? Dr. Fry’s thirty-eight-word families could easily be taught once per week in first grade. Students would leave with the ability to analyze and decode a multitude of English words.
Enlarge Students’ Vocabulary With Morphemes – Word Roots
Phonograms or word families are not the only letter patterns worth teaching. Morphemes are word parts or patterns that not only represent a consistent or regular occurring sound, they also represent meaning and, as such, are well worth teaching if your goal is to expand students’ vocabularies or knowledge of word meanings. Another common name for morphemes is roots. Some of the most common morphemes in English derive from Latin and Greek. The logic behind the use of morphemes in reading instruction is the same as with teaching phonograms—knowledge of one morpheme can help students unlock the meaning to many words—in some cases over 100 English words.
The numerical prefix bi– can be found in English words such as bifocals, biplane, bicycle, biannual, bipartisan, and many more. Similarly, base word roots, morphemes that are the foundation of words, help form the meaning of many English words. Knowing that ject- means “to throw” can help students determine or affirm the meaning of words such as: eject, inject, object, object, reject, interject, conjecture, and many more. Indeed, it has been estimated that the word root trac/tract, meaning pull, draw, drag, is found in over 140 English words! Moreover, most of our multisyllabic words in English as well are academic words (think science, social studies, mathematics) are made of morphemic word roots.
Again, the logic then suggests that teaching a limited number of morphemes or word roots can give students patterns that will allow them to determine the meaning (and sound representation) to a near-limitless number of English words. Then, teaching morphemic word patterns should be seen as the natural follow-up to teaching phonemic word families or phonograms. (Find out more about teaching word roots in my blog article: “A Little Latin (and Greek), and a Whole Lot of English Building Vocabulary with Word Roots,” on the Robb Review – https://therobbreviewblog.com/uncategorized/a-little-latin-and-greakk/
Teach Reading With Poetry: Use Textual Language Patterns
Beyond individual word patterns, we also have language patterns that exist at the text level. Of course, when talking about teaching reading to children, I am referring to poetry for children. Poetry, and I’m including song lyrics as well, follow highly predictable patterns in terms of rhythm and rhyme. That is why poetry, especially poetry and rhymes for children, is so easy to learn. Nearly all children in primary grades can easily recite a plethora of nursery rhymes, poems, and song lyrics. How many of us, as adults, can easily recall song lyrics and poems that we last heard years ago? The textual patterns make them easy to remember.
When working with younger readers, we want them to meet success in learning to read. What better way to ensure success to learn to read poems or other patterned texts each day or two. Of course, such learning requires repetition, and repetition (repeated reading of actual texts is a hallmark of reading fluency development.
One more thing that’s worth noting about poetry for children: most poems rhyme. Returning to what I had previously mentioned, words belonging to particular word families (phonograms or rimes) generally rhyme. So, the use of poetry as a way to develop fluency and success in reading connected text can also be sued as a wonderful way to follow up word family phonics instruction. After learning the –eep word family and associated words, your students can read, reread, and eventually perform Little BoPeep. Instruction with the –ick and –ock word families can be followed with Hickory Dickory Dock.
In Kent State’s Camp Read-A-Lot reading clinic, where young students make remarkable progress in reading in as little as five weeks of instruction, our goal is for students to learn to read something well each and every day of instruction. And that something is usually a poem or a song. Moreover, the poems and songs that students learn are usually tied to the phonemic word families they are also learning.
Sometimes our teachers/clinicians are unable to find a poem along with a word family under instruction. In such cases, the clinicians write their own poems. One added benefit of poetry is that the patterns in poetry can easily be parodied to write new poems that follow the patterns of already-known poems. For example, the nursery rhyme “Diddle Diddle Dumpling My Son Jon” was rewritten by a clinician to reinforce the –ag word family:
Diggle daggle dumpling, Aggie and Mag
Had a dog, and his name was Tag
Tag had a tail that would wiggle and wag
Diggle daggle dumpling, Agnes and Mag.
Imagine the sense of accomplishment Taylor felt as he stood in front of classmates and family members to perform his own poem. Teaching and learning doesn’t get any better than that!
Find out more about teaching and using poetry in my blog article: “Why Poetry, Let Me Count the Ways,” on the Robb Review: https://therobbreviewblog.com/?s=poetry
References and Resources
Fry, E. (1998). The most common phonograms. The Reading Teacher, 51, 620-622.
Harrison, D., Rasinski T.V., & Fresch, M. (2022). Partner Poems & Word Ladders for Building Foundational Literacy Skills: Grades K-2 and 1-3. New York: Scholastic.
Rasinski, T. V., Padak, N., Newton, R. & Newton, E. (2020). Building Vocabulary with Greek and Latin Roots: A Professional Guide to Word Knowledge and Vocabulary Development (2nd ed.). Huntington Beach, CA: Shell Educational Publishing. (Professional Development Book)
Rasinski, T. V., Padak, N., Newton, R., & Newton, E. (2019). Building Vocabulary from Word Roots. Huntington Beach, CA: Shell Educational Publishing. (Vocabulary Instruction Kit for Grades K to 11).
