Gill 2007

Sharon Gill's article discusses the lost world of poetry in elementary school classrooms. It has been engrained in our society that poetry has to be piece that only academic scholars can understand and evaluate (Gill, pg. 622) . For this very reason, poetry is viewed as not being appropriate for elementary aged students and therefore, not taught in schools or even found within public libraries. Gill's article focuses on bring poetry back into the classrooms. Her approach to poetry is meant to enjoy, to feel, and to participate in. Gill provides countless examples of good poetry for children and also provides the simplest of ways that it can be added into the classroom curriculum. "Helping children enjoy and appreciate poetry is as simple as sharing a favorite poem and letting students talk about what they notice" (Gill, pg. 623). Bottom line, poetry should not be ignored within the classroom setting. Poetry can be a great asset to any child's education.

For the past few weeks, my students have been learning all about visualizing. My CT has just focused on providing children with numerous examples through read-alouds and oral stories. Once, we used a short poetry piece to pull out detailed words which helped us to visualize what the author was trying to portray. I never once considered focusing on poetry to help students learn visualizing but after reading this piece, it is easy to see that poetry is the perfect type of literature piece. Students would have to use their senses to really connect to the piece. They cannot rely on visual clues which forces them to really create their own picture. If poetry was the first bit of literature introduced to my students when visualizing was being taught, I believe that their work in Writer's Workshop would have been much better and much easier for them to write.

As a professional, I believe that I need to have more experience with poetry myself. I grew up without much exposure to poetry and therefore do not feel comfortable with working with this type of literature. If I want my children to learn from poetry and apply the things that they learn while reading poetry to their own literacy development, I must do the same.

My students are currently learning the different steps involved during Writer's Workshop. The sole purpose of learning these steps at this moment is for DWA testing. Learning more about Writer's Workshop has shown to me that this cannot be just a week long lesson. Students need to be constantly learning how to improve during each step of the writing process and should also be applying the new skills that they learn during reading to their own writing. Reading and writing are very much interconnected and I do not believe their is much of a bridge between the two subject areas. I hope that during my unit, I will be able to connect both subjects.