Regular Use of Poems for Literacy Instruction

In this article in Reading Today, Timothy Rasinski and Belinda Zimmerman (Kent State University) advocate that students – especially struggling readers – be exposed to children’s poetry every day. Here’s why:

• Poems for children are short.
• Poems are fun to read and lend themselves to being shared and/or performed for an audience.
• The rhythmical, predictable, rhyming nature of most children’s poems makes learning easier.
• Rhymes are a good way to teach word families and phonics.
• Poems cover all areas of the curriculum.

Rasinski and Zimmerman recommend poems by these authors: Arnold Adoff, Brod Bagert, Douglas Florian, Kristine O’Connell George, Eloise Greenfield, Nikki Grimes, David Harrison, Mary Ann Hoberman, Lee Bennett Hopkins, Karla Kuskin, Brice Lansky, Myra Cohn Livingston, Eve Merriam, A.A. Milne, Kenn Nesbitt, Robb Pottle, Jack Prelutsky, Shel Silverstein, Robert Louis Stevenson, Anastasia Suen, and Jane Yolen. 

“What’s the Perfect Text for Struggling Readers? Try Poetry!” by Timothy Rasinski and Belinda Zimmerman in Reading Today, April/May 2013 (Vol. 30, #5, p. 15-16), www.reading.org/readingtoday; Rasinski can be reached at trasinsk@kent.edu

From the Marshall Memo #486