Inside: 4th and 5th grade are the last pivotal years before secondary education. Teachers who take on this role have the amazing opportunity to encourage a deep love of poetry… if they choose the right 4th and 5th grade poems. Below you’ll find a helpful assortment of poems, resources, and strategies to help your readers fall in love with poetry.
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Open letter from a 6th grade teacher to those saintly elementary ELA teachers
Dear Elementary English Language Arts Teachers,
First off, thank you for paving the way for secondary reading and writing. We know how difficult it is to set that foundational layer, and we pour out our heartfelt thanks for your hard work.
As you approach your poetry units, I ask that you would do one thing: help the students fall in love with it. Even if you don’t enjoy the genre, find a way to smile about poetry. Here’s the why – years down the line, they come to us with their minds made up: they either love it or they hate it, but either way, they’ve already decided. Getting an adolescent to change their mind about anything is like running through knee-deep mud.
Dress up poetry. Make it wear its nicest clothes and bring its best sense of humor – this is a first date after all. Just when everyone’s having a good time, shoot cupid’s arrow so the love potion is cast and everyone is cheery about rhymes and figurative language.
I won’t leave you without ideas though! Keep reading for activity ideas!
All My Gratitude,
Mrs. Price
How to Make 4th and 5th Grade Poems Attractive
Choose a variety of 4th and 5th grade friendly poems
- Use Humor, like Shel Silverstein or Kenn Nesbitt
- Choose cross curricular poems to connect to introduce other content
- Use Holiday & Celebration Poems to make the event special
- Choose thoughtful and emotional poems to bring in the feelings side of poetry.
2. Select poems that go beyond the surface
Don’t underestimate what your upper elementary students can understand. I’m not saying to throw them Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116, but choose poems that foster critical thinking skills. Sign up here for a free printable of poems that fit this description.
Below you will find my favorite resources for teaching poetry. If I had to buy one resource book, it would definitely be the Poetry Friday Anthology because it provides a mini lesson on how to teach the poem as well as suggestions about thematic connections between poems. My team and I use it regularly!
Some days poetry is for soaking in – nothing more. I had a professional development leader who read us poetry after lunch every day. We came in, bellies full, and she slowly read through a poem or two. It was casual, inviting, and it caused me to really think about the meaning of the words. No one required me to show my thinking or analysis. Sometimes kids need to just soak in the words. Poetry is a good use of the five minutes before transitions to specials or lunch.
Other days, poetry is a riddle needing to be solved or a fluency skit needing to be practiced. Challenge students to figure out a who am I poem or what a poet was really trying to say. For my favorite ways to analyze poetry see my previous post here.
Find a healthy balance for your class between reading poetry to enjoy and studying poetry like a code. I have a poetry library that students have access to during reader’s workshop, and many enjoy smiling through the pages of The Giving Tree or A Pizza the Size of the Sun.
Check out my favorite strategies to analyze poetry here!
4. Trust kids to write their own poetry
My mom saved the cutest image of my first poem. “The flowers in the garden are a rainbow.” The letters are all misshapen and I drew a rainbow of flowers. I wrote the poem in first grade. Unfortunately I can’t remember the assignment or activity given, but I know that Mrs. Hinman empowered her first graders to write poetry. She said I could, so I did.
If you aren’t sure where to begin, my favorite method is to use Love That Dog and model poems the same way Mrs. Stretchberry did in the book. Its similar to Jeff Anderson’s invitational grammar. I put out an invitation for students to imitate a specific poem. It provides structure for striving writers, while allowing advanced writers to build off the imitation, taking it to a much higher level. It’s astounding what students create when given the opportunity!
What Poems to Choose?
I’ve gathered together a list of 4th and 5th grade poems that meet the above mentioned suggestions. They are just tough enough to have depth of meaning without being intimidating. They are available to download in a classroom ready PDF file here.
- Love That Boy by Walter Dean Myers
- A sweet poem that teaches refrain and could be used as a model poem.
- I’m Nobody! Who are you? By Emily Dickinson
- Deals with self-image, popularity and I could even see it tying into social media.
- Deals with self-image, popularity and I could even see it tying into social media.
- Toad by the Road by Joanne Ryder
- Could be useful to explore point of view and perspective. Use as a model poem for how other animals or inanimate objects perceive the world.
- Who Has Seen the Wind? By Christina Rossetti
- Fog by Carl Sandburg
- Simple, but powerful example of figurative language
- Messages from Everywhere by Naomi Shihab Nye
- If-ing by Langston Hughes
- Clever and innovative
- Waiting by Nikki Grimes
- Sad poem that would ivite compassion into your classroom. This would be great to tie into a service-learning project,
- Things by Eloise Greenfield
- This speaks to the importance of writing and how our word matter.
- There is a Tree by Karla Kuskin
If you have students who need an extra challenge – those GT kiddos who also need to come to school and learn something new everyday, check out my poems for middle school or poems for high school posts. They may appreciate the challenge of having a more difficult text to unlock.
Thank you for your hard work, and for making poetry lovely.
We can’t thank you enough,
Secondary Teachers
Don’t forget to sign up for a free downloadable template of these poems!
It’s ready for classroom use. Plus, you get complete access to all of my previous printables and I’ll send you an occasional literacy strategy or activity.
