April is National Poetry Month making it the perfect time to incorporate poetry for elementary kids in Kindergarten-5th Grade! If you haven’t been using poems to improve fluency skills in your classroom yet, now is the time to start with your elementary students. While poetry will look different based on the grade level of your students, the purpose remains the same. Help readers improve their fluent reader skills, with appropriate and engaging poetry for elementary kids. Keep reading to find out how you can include poetry for elementary kids in your classroom!
Poetry for Elementary Kids
Poetry for elementary kids can be such a beneficial addition to your classroom. As someone who is a big believer in the importance of working on fluency skills, incorporating poetry into your fluency routine can have a large impact on building fluent readers.
Poems can be used to build fluent reading skills, including:
- accuracy
- expression
- comprehension
Fluency poems work great in small groups, for independent work, in a fluency center, or sent home in a fluency binder or fluency folder. If using these in the classroom, you can first model how to read the poem, fluently. Students can then repeat each line to sound just like you. Your students will hear you reading poetry for elementary kids using expressive reading. They’ll hear how you stress certain words or syllables and how your intonation changes based on the lines read in each poem. This will help them build their fluency skills because they’ll then try to mimic you and the way you read each poem.
Other Benefits of Using Poetry for Elementary Kids
By using poetry for elementary kids, you’re also exposing your students to new vocabulary words as well as the elements of poetry. Readers may notice how there are repeated phrases, rhyming lines, or stanzas with very descriptive vocabulary words that they may not hear in other types of texts. With exposure to new vocabulary and more descriptive words, students’ comprehension of these more challenging words will also improve. This will help their reading of other texts, as well. Students may also make personal connections to emotions conveyed in certain poetry for elementary kids. The more connected they feel to what they read, the more engaged and invested they are in the repeated readings. While kids are used to reading or listening to picture books, or passages, poems may be something they aren’t exposed to as often. So, take advantage of poetry month as a time to incorporate more poetry for elementary kids in your classroom!
Poetry for Elementary Kids
- There are 10-15 poems included in each set which will provide you with enough to use through the end of the year.
- There is a full page version of each poem. This is perfect for morning work, a fluency center, or to send home in a fluency binder for repeated readings.
- A one page format is also included that has the poem, a different fluency focus for repeated readings, and comprehension questions. This is great for small groups or independent work.
- Each fluency poem comes with comprehension questions.
- An answer key is included as well so that you can quickly review how students did on the reading comprehension portion.
Kindergarten-5th Grade Poems
The shorter Kindergarten poems focus on poems with a rhyme scheme as that is most appealing to these young readers. Early readers love rhymes because they feel familiar to them and are simpler to remember. Singsong rhyming poems are enjoyable to listen to and to repeat. So, if students practice reading the poems on repeat, they’ll be building their fluency skills during those repeated readings. They’ll grow more confident in their ability to sound like readers.
The 1st Grade and 2nd Grade poems are a little longer and include some more challenging vocabulary words. With each repeated reading readers will get better at reading the words (accuracy) and also use more expression as they make their way through each reading.
The 3rd Grade 4th Grade and 5th Grade poems also include more descriptive language, greater variety of stanzas, and more challenging comprehension questions for the students to answer.
There is so much to learn from one single poem whether using my 1st Grade and 2nd Grade poems or my 3rd Grade poetry worksheets. March and April can be busy times of year in upper elementary classrooms between prepping for state testing and actually completing the state test. Your 4th Grade and 5th graders will appreciate the break from test prep while they read through these poems. Using the poetry for elementary students is another way to complete comprehension practice that can be less intense than other comprehension focused activities. You can also easily incorporate these poetry for elementary kids into your poetry unit that you may be doing this month.
Check out the Kindergarten, 1st Grade and 2nd Grade, 3rd Grade 4th Grade and 5th Grade sets! If you work with a wide range of grade levels or ability levels, whether in special education, reading intervention, or as a classroom teacher, you may want to look at my Kindergarten-5th Grade bundle of poetry for elementary kids!
Free Poetry for Elementary Kids
If you’re a little unsure about using poetry for elementary kids, you can first try out my free fluency poems for Kindergarten-5th Grade. Grab the free poetry for elementary kids here! These follow the same format as the poems above, so you’ll have comprehension questions for your elementary students to complete after the poems, as well.
I also have other sets of poetry for elementary kids that are highly engaging. Read all about these poems here: New Engaging Kindergarten-5th Grade Poems for Teaching Reading Fluency
I hope you enjoy incorporating poetry for elementary kids in your classroom to help build fluency skills!
