May First - Poemsongs and a Poetry Peek

Thank you so much for joining me in my project

for National Poetry Month 2015

I am so grateful for all of the fun and fellowship all around the Kidlitosphere throughout this year's National Poetry Month.  Thank you for all that you shared on blogs, with me in person, with the world.

Sing that Poem! 2015 has officially ended with the recording for yesterday's poem, the final poem, Joanna (for the real Joanna).

And now...a Poetry Peek!

Today I am very happy to welcome Librarian Gayle Kerman from Country Parkway Elementary in the Williamsville Central School District in Williamsville, NY. Below she shares her students' experience with Sing That Poem!.

Recently, I got caught up in Amy’s April challenge of matching her poems to the meter/tune of familiar children’s songs.  I decided to try it with my fourth grade students. What a lucky find.  Most of the work was already done for me.

I am an elementary school librarian and since I only see the students once a week, I was looking for something that would fit into a 30-minute period.  I selected eight of Amy’s poems and pasted them into a Word document. I also made up an answer sheet that listed the 8 songs that matched the poems.  I only had to do a quick introduction to get the class started.  I used a few examples from Alan Katz’s book I’m Still Here in the Bathtub just to give students a better idea of what they should expect once they got started.

Many of the students were already familiar with the Katz book and were big fans to boot, so they were excited about this new challenge ahead of them.  Before turning them loose, we quickly sang the original version of the 8 songs on their answer sheet to be sure that the tunes were familiar to them.

They worked in groups of two or four.  It was a fun activity and many students chuckled over the idea of having “music class in the library!!”

I circled the room for any questions, but the activity really just hummed.  The students LOVED it…both girls AND boys.  I noticed two boys who were intently focusing and enjoying the activity so much I had to pull out my iPhone to take this video of them.

Joseph and Emilio from Mrs. Moser's Fourth Grade Class

Play Sing That Poem! in the Library at Country Parkway Elementary

Video by Librarian Gayle Kerman

During the last 5 minutes of class the solutions were revealed and we sang each poem to the matched tune.  I plan to select 8-10 more poems from the last half of Amy’s April posts and use them at the end of the school year when I will really need some fun stuff!

I am so grateful to Gayle, Joseph, and Emilio for sharing this story and video here today.  I love that we spent some of our National Poetry Month together.

Today, I would like to welcome you to the new page I made with all of my Sing That Poem! poemsongs from April 2015. You can find this page here, and it is filed under the FIND A POEM tab that you see atop this site.

You can find today's Poetry Friday roundup with Ellen at Space City Scribes.

Letterpress Print by Chris

Moon Rabbit Press

(Thank you, Chris, for allowing me to share.)

Please share a comment below if you wish.