Poetry is one of the most often overlooked forms studied in school. Many believe it has to do with the teachers' experiences with poetry when they were students. Traditional (read OLD) poetry in literature anthologies do little to remedy the situation. Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong have teamed up before and their latest offering (aligned to TEKS for Texas and CCSS for the rest of the world) is THE POETRY FRIDAY ANTHOLOGY: POEMS FOR THE SCHOOL YEAR, K-5 EDITION (Pomels Books, 2012).
Vardell and Wong encourage teachers to take 5 minutes each and every Friday of the school year to pause and share a poem with the class. To that end, they have assembled an incredibly rich collection of poems for Kindergarten through fifth grade, arranged them in a logical sequence, and provided suggestions for reading aloud, for pre and post reading activities. I had to resist dog-earing page after page, poem after poem. How wonderful to have at your fingertips such a resource!
Thanks, Sylvia and Janet for reminding all of us of the beauty and fun and language of the poets.