Blog Post 1: Poetry Book – I’ll Read to You, You Read to Me by John Ciardi

    This is a book that contains many poems for children. In this book there are poems about animals and people. Some of the poems included in the book are about sharks, cats, mice, families, moms, dads, drinking a cold drink and other high interest poems for children. Most importantly the poems are funny and fun to read.

    After reading some of the poems in the book the poems are narratives and have some rhyming in them. In the poem About Shark Teeth, by John Ciardi, it has rhyming words at the end of the sentences which helps to expose children to rhyming words. It also teaches children about how many teeth sharks have and how many rows of teeth sharks have.

    Some motivational activities you can do with children with this book is choose a few poems for the children to student. Using the poem About Shark Teeth the children can read the poem and then there can be other books in the classroom about shark teeth. In the children’s reader response journal, they can write a few sentences about things they have learned about sharks using the poem and the informational texts that have been provided in the classroom. Some questions to help guide the student’s writing would be. How many teeth do sharks have?  How many rows of teeth do sharks have? What would you do if you met a shark while swimming? Another activity that can be used with this poem is picking out the rhyming pairs and have the students write the rhyming pairs in their reading response notebook and come up with a third word that rhymes. This will help the teacher see if the student understands rhyming words.