Poems for Many Voices

We love poetry in our house! The girls enjoy rereading their favorite poems again and again and will often choose poetry collections for their nightly bedtime reading.

The other day I happened upon this review for the book Messing Around on the Monkey Bars and Other School Poems for Two Voices by Betsy Franco. I was immediately reminded of one of my classroom favorites from the same genre Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices by Paul Fleischman. Now that both girls are reading, I knew they would have a lot of fun with these poetry books so I went straight onto our library’s Web site and ordered them.

Once they got the rhythm, they could not put the books down. They loved it so much that they chose two of their favorite poems and recorded them as voice memos on their iPods. They delighted in hearing their voices and listened to the recordings over and over. It turned out to be a great tool, as they started to notice and make comments on their tone, expression, and fluency of reading. So, here you have it—reciting and recording poetry is the first item on our “Productive Uses for iPods” list.