Para escribir poesía...

I love this poemita by Francisco X. Alarcón.  Poetry seems to be making a comeback in priority in the classroom probably due to its resurgence on standardized tests.  As this poem indicates, those lessons on the five senses from the early grades will provide the foundation for students to be able to write poetry in the upper grades.

What way have you found to help your students touch, smell, and taste words?

Booksource Spanish Poetry Book Giveaway!

Yippee!  What's better than being on summer break?  Being on summer break AND winning free stuff for your classroom!  The Warren Instructional Network is a representative for some of the best instructional resource providers out there like Heinemann, Booksource, Fountas & Pinnell, Benchmark Education, and Mondo Education Publishing.  Several of these companies provide excellent Spanish language and bilingual resources.

Booksource has collections of Spanish poetry books for the primary grades and the upper elementary grades.  Kyle Warren is offering one lucky I Teach Dual Language reader a five book sampling from both collections!









Here's how to enter for a chance to win:
In their efforts to serve bilingual teachers even better, the Warren Instructional Network would like to know, how important to you is the use of authentic (versus translated) Spanish language materials in your daily literacy instruction?  


Leave a comment below with your answer and you will receive one entry in the drawing.  Want a bonus entry?  "Like" I Teach Dual Language on Facebook and leave a comment here that you did.

Anonymous entries cannot win because that makes announcing the winner very difficult!  The giveaway will close at 8 pm CST on Friday, June 8th and a randomly drawn winner will be announced by 9 pm.   

Literacy Lesson: Spanish Poems for Visualization

In the Exploring Nonfiction Teacher Resource Notebook that came with my Time for Kids Exploring Nonfiction kit, I read these words: 

Experienced educators recognize the truth in the old adage, "A picture is worth a thousand words."  Visualization -- seeing the words of a text as mental images in the mind -- is a significant factor setting apart proficient readers from low-achieving ones.  Studies have shown that the ability to generate vivid images while reading strongly correlates with a person's comprehension of text.  However, research has also revealed that 20 percent of all children do not visualize or experience sensory images when reading.  These children are automatically handicapped in their ability to comprehend text, and they are usually the students who avoid and dislike reading because they never connect to text in a personal, meaningful way.




Wow!  I read those words ten years ago and have since kept them in my big binder of reading strategies.  That 20% statistic just stuck with me.  It just makes me so sad to think of those kids that do not enjoy reading because they have never experienced the ability to create their own mental images of the text they read.

Enter Shel Silverstein and his awesome poems for visualization.  They are perfect for helping elementary students create mental images!  You can see these poems below that I used on English days to model my own visualization and then the students practiced with the Spanish poems from Silverstein's book Batacazos and Donde el camino se corta.  We had so much fun!  Of course, I forgot to take pictures of their work but you can download the poems here for free!  I would love to see what your students come up with!

 

 

 

 

Poetry...it's not a joke anymore!

I am the worst joke-teller alive and that is one of the many things I learned about myself in college. Recognizing my weakness in this area, I decided to learn to tell one joke really well. And I did. It is awesome. But, it requires motions so it must be told in person and I won't risk my one good joke failing here in writing!

When I spent the summer before my senior year of college in Spain, I decided that I needed to be bilingual in my joke telling. The other joke is a play on the English langauge so it would not work in translation. My good friend, Jimmy, taught me this joke, "¿En qué se parece un tren a un plátano? El tren no espera y el plátano no es pera."

Okay, I will wait for you to pick yourself off of the floor from laughing so hard...

My jokes may be really bad but I am a sucker for playing with language. In fact, this is my favorite radio show and I believe it should be required listening for all teachers of English language learners but that is for a whole other post!

Historically, poetry and related language play have been reserved for the final six weeks of the year in most curricular scope and sequences.  In part, because it was not tested and, in part, because it is often misunderstood, poetry has been one of those extraneous genres that was often skipped or treated very superficially.

While poetry may not seem as "meat and potatoes" to the reader's diet as realistic fiction, poetry develops that elusive skill of inferring that we are constantly seeking to develop in our students.  Poetry, by its very nature, makes us look more closely at the text with the presupposition that there must be another layer of meaning that we as the reader must search out. 

Texas's revised ELAR/SLAR standards and new STAAR test are putting a spotlight on poetry:

3.5 Analyze, make inferences and draw conclusions about theme and genre in different cultural, historical, and contemporary contexts and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding (2008 TEKS)

Figure 19 D

Make inferences about text and use textual evidence to support (2008 TEKS)

In the fall, I saw this anchor chart in development in a third grade dual-language classroom in Stephenville:

We are starting to pay more attention to poetry but, for you bilingual and dual-language teachers, my question is this:  Who are your favorite Spanish poets for children and what are your favorite poems and/or anthologies?

I was in a second grade bilingual classroom last year and observed a group of students practically fighting over several poetry anthologies by Maria Elena Walsh.  I would like to compile a list on this site of more favorite poets.  Please let me know your suggestions!

Neruda would be proud!

The new STAAR test includes an expectation for students to be able to understand and analyze literary texts including poetry.

This is from the 3rd Grade STAAR document from TEA: Reading/Comprehension of Literary Text/Poetry. Students understand, make inferences and draw conclusions about the structure and elements of poetry and provide evidence from text to support their understanding. Students are expected to (A) describe the characteristics of various forms of poetry and how they create imagery (e.g., narrative poetry, lyrical poetry, humorous poetry, free verse). Supporting Standard
I was in a third grade bilingual class just before Thanksgiving and snapped a picture of this poem that was taped to the white board. Isn't this great evidence of understanding and analysis? I wasn't there for the lesson but it is obvious that the teacher was noting her thinking along with the class's input as they carefully read and analyzed the poetry. This is exactly what we would want the student's poem to look like on the test so it is important that the students see us model this and gradually release the pen over to them. This isn't just the type of work we expect for STAAR, this is college-preparation! Bring on Neruda! Bring on Machado! We are ready!