Good Poetry for Trying Out Loud
Sylvia M. Vardell, Ph.D.
Texas Woman's University School of Library & Information Studies
For a shy person, I sure enjoy sharing poetry out loud. I enjoy hearing it read aloud by the poets themselves, I enjoy reading it aloud to myself, and I enjoy inviting children to participate in the reading aloud of poetry. The spoken form of poetry is pleasurable for me, a kind of primal experience in a world full of electronic communication. And I find that children enjoy the immediacy of hearing poems out loud, too. For them, poetry is part of the playground and preschool, found in jump-rope rhymes and chants, nursery rhymes and finger plays. With their young ears tuned to the sounds and music of language, they respond easily to the rhyme and rhythm of poetry.
Poetry helps children move forward in their literacy development by introducing new vocabulary and figurative language, reinforcing phonemic awareness through sounds and rhymes. It is rich in imagery and sensory language and stimulating to the imagination. It is meant to be spoken and heard, and thus provides practice for oral language development, listening, and oral fluency. Author and literacy expert Mem Fox states, "Rhymers will be readers; it's that simple. Experts in literacy and child development have discovered that if children know eight nursery rhymes by heart by the time they're four years old, they're usually among the best readers by the time they're eight." (From Reading Magic: What Reading Aloud to Our Children Will Change Their Lives Forever, Harcourt, 2001)
Fortunately, there are many wonderful collections of poetry for children published each year that maximize the oral qualities of poetry. Many are designed specifically for sharing orally and in participatory ways with children. Mary Ann Hoberman has created a blending of narrative and poetry in her You Read to Me, I'll Read to You (Little, Brown) books of stories (2001), fairy tales (2004), and Mother Goose (2005). Each collection is told in rhyme with columns of color-coded text for two readers to share. The strong rhythms of her poetry serve these simple narratives well. Kids can't resist the back and forth bounce of these two-page tales, so cleverly illustrated by Michael Emberley.
Another recent anthology worth noting is Caroline Kennedy's A Family of Poems: My Favorite Poetry for Children (Hyperion, 2005), a mix of classic and contemporary poems for young people that were shared often in her own famous family. What particularly caught my attention was how these poems were an important part of the family's oral tradition, shared person to person, out loud and often. In addition, she has included a section of foreign poems in their original languages, recognizing that some beloved poems are known by others in other languages.
Poetry Speaks to Children (Sourcebooks, 2005), edited by Elise Paschen, includes a CD with the book containing sixty poems read aloud by the poets themselves. It is wonderful to hear selections read by the likes of Robert Frost, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Mary Ann Hoberman. And with this colorfully illustrated book, children can read the poems while they hear the words read aloud, reinforcing their developing reading skills, too.
There are also several well-designed websites that offer audio downloads of poetry for children. For example, poet Kristine O'Connell George reads aloud over a dozen of her poems in her Poetry Aloud section, accessible via simple free software such as RealAudio or Windows Media. Other poetry-related websites include audio files among their links, such as the audio archives of the Academy of American Poets.
Reading poems out loud helps children attend to the sounds of the words and lines as well as to their meaning, and sets the stage for child participation in the read-aloud process. Experimenting with various vocal arrangements can also help provide an outlet for self-expression and build student confidence. One of the easiest ways to begin is to seek out poems with repeated lines or stanzas that can serve as a chorus for group participation. The adult should read the poem out loud first as a model. Then in subsequent readings the children are invited to join in on a line or refrain that pops up repeatedly in the poem. You can support their participation by putting the stanza, line, or repeated word on a large strip of paper or display board, which makes this strategy even easier to carry out with large groups of kids.
For elementary-aged children, ages 5-12, I prefer to emphasize choral reading, readers theater, poetry jams, poetry café readings, and puppetry à la Sara Holbrook's approach in Wham! It's a Poetry Jam: Discovering Performance Poetry (Wordsong/Boyds Mills Press, 2003). These spoken-word events allow children to participate with the support of a partner or group and help them gain confidence as they share poetry with an audience. For example, poetry jams usually begin with one volunteer choosing a favorite poem to share. Then another child can choose a word or image from the poem and find another poem linked to that topic to share. Other children continue the connection with additional poems. Children begin to look at poems in more open-ended ways, looking for connections, ready to share them in almost a game-like fashion.
Other ideas for celebrating the oral quality of poetry include inviting guests to read poetry aloud, particularly professional actors in your area who can offer a polished delivery of poetry. Or welcome bilingual members of your community who can read poems in languages other than English, as well as in English. For younger children, try using puppets to share poems aloud. Or consider forming a poetry "troupe" of volunteers to perform their favorite poems at school and library events. Invite older students to select some of their favorite poems to perform for younger students. They might even want to incorporate costumes and use props. As we strive to make poetry come alive, we should support children's efforts at participation, suggest creative alternatives, provide comfortable venues for practice, and never pressure children who prefer to follow rather than lead. •
Sylvia M. Vardell is the author of Poetry Aloud Here! Sharing Poetry with Children in the Library (American Library Association, 2006). She is currently Professor at Texas Woman's University in the School of Library and Information Studies, where she teaches graduate courses in children's and young adult literature, poetry, multicultural children's literature, and nonfiction. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1983. Her research and publications have focused on a variety of literature-related topics including genre study, book selection and evaluation, and sharing children's literature with English-language learners. Sylvia M. Vardell has published in Language Arts, English Journal, The Reading Teacher, The New Advocate, Young Children, Social Education, and Horn Book, as well as several chapters in books on language and literature. She serves on numerous editorial boards, consults and reviews widely for publishers, and holds offices in a number of professional associations. She served on the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) committee that established the Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children and is currently co-chair of the NCTE Poetry Award committee. She has presented at many state, regional, national, and international conferences, and has received grants from the Middle East Policy Council, the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation, the NCTE, the ALAN Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She taught at the University of Zimbabwe in Africa as a Fulbright scholar in 1989. She is married, has two children, and is a naturalized American citizen.