A Poem a Day (Just the Links)

[This is an exact duplicate of the previous post, but without any of the embedded documents, so that it loads quicker on slow Internet connections.]

(TESOL Ideas--Comprehensible Input, Pronunciation)

                The idea for using poetry in class comes indirectly from Sound Foundations by Adrian Underhill.  Adrian Underhill talks about how he uses “nursery rhymes and limericks” (p. 180) to teach rhythm, rhyme, intonation, and stressed and unstressed syllables.  In his book (pages 180-186) Adrian Underhill suggests several pronunciation and recitation activities that can be done with nursery rhymes and limericks.

                I don’t actually do a lot of explicit pronunciation activities in my classrooms.  (…although arguably maybe I should, but that’s another subject for another post…)  But, I thought that perhaps if I gave my students a lot of exposure to poetry, they may start picking up a lot of the features of rhythm, intonation, and stress patterns on their own just by listening to it.  Particularly with the beginning students, or with the younger learners, I thought that a certain amount of exposure to poetry might be good for pre-empting bad pronunciation habits before they had a chance to form.  (At any rate, since it only took up a couple minutes of class time, I figured one poem every lesson would certainly do my students no harm!)

                And so, I decided to start reading one poem every lesson with my young learner classes.

                I hand out the poem to my students, and then I read it aloud as they follow along with me.  I don’t explicitly draw their attention to any of the pronunciation or rhythm features, but I’m hoping with enough repeated exposure to poetry they will start to pick these up on their own (either consciously or subconsciously). 

                Because my voice acting range is limited, in cases where there is a good audio recording of the poem on youtube or something, I will often use that instead.  Or I read it once myself, and then play the youtube recording as a second reading.  In cases where a good audio recording is unavailable, I just have to make do with my own voice.

                Because the purpose of this activity is on the sounds of English, I don’t believe it’s actually essentially that my students understand the meaning of the poem completely, and in fact some of these poems bordered on being largely incomprehensible to my Young Learner students.  But that being said, obviously if they can understand and enjoy the poem, then it’s much preferable—that way the poem could also function as a source of comprehensible input in addition to its other benefits.

                For my young learner classes, I found the poems of Shel Silverstein worked wonderfully.  They could understand Shel Silverstein, they got the humor, they laughed, and they actually enjoyed the poems. 

                Below are all the poems I’ve used so far in my classes. 

As I continue to discover good poems in the future, I’m hoping to add to this list later, and I plan to continue to edit this post and add more poems as I discover them.  But as of this writing (the original posting date) there are 30 poems, which were enough to get me through one term at my current school.  (At my school one term consists of 30 lessons.)  Originally it was my intention to exposure my students to a wide variety of poetry from a wide variety of authors, but because Shel Silverstein poems seemed to work the best, I kept returning to Shel Silverstein over and over again.  So the list below is heavy on Shel Silverstein. 

                Because this was my first term doing this, I struggled sometimes to find decent poems to use in the classroom.  Although I managed to get through 30 classes, some of the entries on this list probably weren’t the best poems I could have chosen.  I’m hoping that as I continue to do this, I’ll be able to continue to build up my repertoire of good poems to use in the classroom.  In the meantime, if anyone has any good ideas for me, please let me know in the comments section.

                For each poem, I created a Microsoft word document in which I adjusted the formatting somewhat, and also added in various pictures and images.  (None of the images are my own creation, all of them were whatever I could grab with a quick search of Google Images).  I’ve posted these documents on Google Docs, so to see the Microsoft word documents complete with the added visuals, just follow the link to the Google Docs version.  On this blog post, however, I am only reposting the text of the poems, and not any of the visuals.

                For many of these poems, there are some great videos available on youtube.  (The visuals in many of these videos help to make the meaning of the poem clear.)  I was fortunate enough to have an LCD projector in my classroom, so after we finished reading the poem once, I would sometimes show my students the video of the poem.  In those cases, I have included the links below for any videos that I found useful for particular poems. 

Google Drive Folder HERE
Update: I'm creating homework sheets for the students to practice these poems at home.  The Google Drive folder is HERE.
Quizlet Folder HERE.

Antigonish (drive, docs, pub)  Video, Video 2, Homework Worksheet: docs, pub Quizlet HERE
Backward Bill (drive, docs, pub) Video, Video 2, Homework Worksheet: docs, pub Quizlet HERE
Cloony the Clown (drive, docs, pub) Video, Video 2, Homework Worksheet: docs, pub, Quizlet HERE
Dreadful (drive, docs, pub) Video , Video 2, Homework Worksheet: docs, pub  Quizlet HERE
Help (drive, docs, pub) Video , Video 2, Homework Worksheet: docs, pub  Quizlet HERE
Homework Machine (drive, docs, pub) Video
Ladies First (drive, docs, pub) Video
Lazy Jane (drive, docs, pub) Video
Listen to the Mustn'ts (drive, docs, pub) Video
Messy Room (drive, docs, pub) Video
My Rules (drive, docs, pub) Video
My Shadow (drive, docs, pub) Video
Nothing Gold Can Stay (drive, docs, pub) Video
Roger was a Razorfish (drive, docs, pub) Video
Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would Not Take the Garbage Out (drive, docs, pub) Video
Sick (drive, docs, pub) Video
Sounds and Letters Don't Agree (drive, docs, pub) Video
The Ant Eater (drive, docs, pub) Video
The Battle (drive, docs, pub) Video
The Boa Constrictor (drive, docs, pub) Video
The Crocodile (drive, docs, pub) Video
The Crocodile's Toothache (drive, docs, pub) Video
The Dentist and the Crocodile (drive, docs, pub) Video
The Pig (drive, docs, pub) Video
The Spider and the Fly (drive, docs, pub) Video
The Tiger Who Wore White Gloves (drive, docs, pub) Video
The Wolf Hunt (drive, docs, pub) Video
What Are Little Boys Made Of (drive, docs, pub) Video
What Did you Learn in School Today (drive, docs, pub) Video
What-If (drive, docs, pub) Video
When All the World is Young, Lad (drive, docs, pub) Video
The Old Man's Comforts and How He Gained Them by Robert Southey (drive, docs, pub) Video ,
You are Old Father William (drive, docs, pub) Video


Playlist HERE