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Writing Poetry with Kids

During the summer of 1996, I taught a remedial reading class for a group of rising second graders. It was all morning, every morning, Monday through Friday, for several weeks. We did all the usual things: reading, phonics, vocabulary development, a few dreaded worksheets. However, I added a few activities to help break up the time into small segments that were less stressful for kids with short attention spans.

One of these activities was writing poetry. The classroom had an easel that held big pads with sheets of paper that measured 25” by 30”. Each morning, we would gather around the easel to write poetry together as a group. The children would suggest a topic or theme and then each child would contribute something, a line, a phrase, sometimes a single word. I would write everything on one of the large sheets of paper. The final step was to put the words and phrases in the order we wanted them.

At the end of the summer session, I typed up their poems, one to a page, and stapled them into booklets, one for each child. Here was a book they could all easily read because they had written it. They were so proud of themselves, and I was so pleased that something I had planned had turned out so well.

So, here it is, a collection of poems written by a bunch of kids who were stuck in summer school with me. I hope you enjoy reading them.

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