Reading and Writing With A Poet's Eye

This week we began our study of Poetry in both Readers and Writers Workshop. The classroom is bursting with poem books of all varieties and the students have begun to learn how to use their "poet's eye" to read, discuss, interpret, and write poetry.

In Writer's Workshop we headed outside to use our senses to observe the trees that sit on top of the hill at Allen Brook. The students jotted in their Poetry Journals about the size, shape, textures, and smells of the trees. The next day we practiced using line breaks to take our notes and put them into a poem. Next week we will think about where poets get ideas for their poems, how poets use interesting word choice, and will learn different structures of poems.

In Readers Workshop we created poetry folders to store all of the poems that we discuss and interpret together. Then they will have a collection to read and reread with partners to build fluency skills. We made a chart of the things that we notice about poetry and have used our poet's eyes to interpret what the poet's message is. We listened to Langston Hughes read us his poem, Dream Variations, and then we discussed what we thought his message was. I was amazed at how profound the student thinking was about this beautiful poem. Here were some of the thoughts that we had:

" When he said 'black like me' it made me think that maybe he has black skin."
" I thought the same thing when it said, 'dark like me."
" When he wrote 'till the white day is done' I thought that maybe the poet lived during Martin Luther King time when black people and white people didn't get along."
" I think that he was writing about when he was a little boy and thinking about what he wanted when he was grown up."
" I thought it was different. I was thinking that he was really writing about a dream that he was having when he was asleep."

We would love to have you comment on what you thought the author's message was in this poem.


Dream Variations

To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
Dark like me-
That is my dream!

To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun,
Dance! Whirl! Whirl!
Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening...
A tall, slim tree...
Night coming tenderly
Black like me.
Langston Hughes