"Ickle Me, Tickle Me, Poetry Too!"

This week I started my poetry unit. Lines, stanzas, repetition, alliteration, rhythm, meter, stressed and unstressed syllables; the whole she-bang. While gathering poems to use for my unit, I somehow forgot to include my favorite book ever: Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. I could NOT believe that I had forgotten it! Even though I had already written my plans for the week, I decided to go back and edit. The word "poetry" should have a picture of this book next to it in the dictionary; seriously.

Today we learned about repetition. This is probably the easiest poetry device to teach. The poem I decided to use was "Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me Too" by, you guessed it, Shel Silverstein. Thanks to the handy-dandy Youtube, I found a cool reading of the poem by the man himself. After listening to the poem twice, I gave my kids a copy of the poem in easy-to-read text and displayed a copy on my Smartboard(C). I asked the students to find a line that repeated throughout the poem and circle it each time it shows up. It turns out that the "Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me Too" line is repeated SEVEN times! I then had my kids identify the first stanza, number the lines, and circle all of the end rhymes. For the next stanza, I called on students to come up to the board and identify the same things on the next stanza and the next. To give them another example of the use of repetition in poetry, I recited, in my most "poety" voice, another Shel Silverstein poem I had to memorize in 1st grade called "Lazy Jane".

My kids just did not understand why Jane would lay there for so long and broke out into giggle-fits. They wanted to hear the poem again and again. <3 Honestly, I was afraid to teach a poetry unit. Although I am a Language Arts lover, I was never confident with poetry. But after watching my kids have a good time with poetry and trying to recite "Ickle Me" during study hall, my confidence shot up. Learning is an ongoing process and today I learned something new: Even if you're not sure about something, try it anyway. If it fails, try again. If it succeeds, try even harder! Next week, my students will be learning about different types of poems and creating their own poetry book. I haven't told them yet, but I know that they will be VERY excited. Man, I love my job. God bless <3