Teaching Second Grade Students to Love Writing Poetry
a book review by Doreen Anderson

Routman, Regie. Kid’s Poems: Teaching Second Graders to Love Writing Poetry, Scholastic, 2000.

In her book, Kids’ Poems: Teaching Second Graders to Love Writing Poetry, Regie Routman encourages teachers to share poetry with their students and to teach students how to write their own poetry. She states that poetry writing - with its initial de-emphasis on the mechanics of handwriting, spelling and punctuation - facilitates ability to express oneself freely and poetically.

Ms. Routman recommends using free-verse (non rhyming) poetry because rhyming poems are difficult for students to write. She says students spend so much time focusing on rhymes that the resulting poems are often contrived. She states that using kids’ poems as models is the most powerful vehicle for motivating students to write poetry. Her book presents many examples of students’ poetry in “rough draft” and final form, for teachers to use until they can collect samples of poetry from their own students. She reminds teachers to save original drafts and final copies of their students’ poems, with their permission, for use during future years.

Ms. Routman suggests teaching poetry writing a minimum of several days a week, for at least two to three weeks. These lessons should include a demonstration or mini-lesson, sustained writing time and conferencing, sharing and celebrating of students’ work. Teachers are instructed to use mini-lessons to present ideas for writing and to point out elements of poetry, but to remember to “look at each poem as a whole, not to be broken into skills or parts.” Suggested elements of poetry to be taught during mini-lessons include the importance of titles, word choice, expressing feelings, choosing topics that tap into a personal interest, creating the rhythm of a poem, experimenting with line breaks and white space, and crafting the ending line.

According to Ms. Routman, students should be allowed to select their own topics. They should be encouraged to write about what really interests them - what they care about, what they know, what they observe, and how they feel about things. Teachers should focus on making poetry writing easy, pleasurable and successful. Teachers are encouraged to write their own poems “on the spot” in front of the students, thinking aloud as they do so in order to allow students to see the process the teacher goes through. Teachers are reminded to keep these poems at a level comparable to that which is achievable by their students.

Other ideas presented by Ms. Routman include “poet of the day,” setting up a year-round poetry corner with favorite poetry books, encouraging students to keep a poetry notebook, frequently sharing students’ efforts in a variety of ways, and creating a class anthology. She includes suggestions for poetry books that might be used in the classroom and housed in the class poetry corner.

I found Ms. Routman’s book to be very complete, easy to comprehend, and motivational. I am very excited about her ideas and will be implementing them in my second grade classroom next year.