The poetry slam

Short poems are especially great vehicles for choral reading. Students may enjoy presenting their work to a larger group after some practice, even adding other dramatic elements, such as gestures or sound effects. Although this is choral reading, encourage everyone to read at least one line solo.

Help your group decide what the poem is about (comprehension) and how to read it aloud to create appropriate effects (fluency/pronunciation/expression). Here’s an example, working with the poem Construction, by Virginia Schonberg.

WHAM!
Comes the wrecking ball.
WHAM!
And the bricks fly.
   Students decide they will say the first four lines together, very loudly
   and forcefully.
I see where people lived
   After some discussion, they choose one reader to say this line.
In rooms with pale blue walls,
Pale green, pale rose
   Only the high voices read these lines, very softly and sadly.
WHAM!
A whole wall crumples,
Sinks into red dust.
   Readers gasp, make sounds of amazement.
I see where the people have lived.
   Another student gets a solo.
WHAM!
   Readers decide this should be the loudest “Wham” line; the following
   two lines are solos.
I see old tables
And a bed.
   All join in at the end, softly again.
Where did they go,
The people who lived
In the rooms with the pale blue walls,
Pale green, pale rose?

As the group practices and becomes more confident, they may add gestures, pointing to what they “see,” or work with boards, cans, and stones to create sound effects of the falling building.

Follow this activity by asking students to speculate about where the families who lived in the house have gone. Through discussion, encourage children to invent stories about the families’ new lives. Have each group member take the role of a child who lived in the building and write a brief letter about what she likes best about her new life and/or what she misses most about life in the old building. Children may also like to write their own poems, individually or as a group.