Note to principals

Dear Principal,

Since October 2009 I’ve sponsored Word of the Month Poetry Challenge on the blog page (http://davidlharrison.wordpress.com) of my website (http://davidlharrison.com). Adults and students nationwide write poems inspired by the Word of the Month and post their results where hundreds of readers visit.

Students whose early experiences with writing are fun and challenging are more inclined to value writing and enjoy doing it. Taking a single word and discovering the stories it holds is that kind of entertaining experience. Once students feel successful using the One Word Challenge, teachers might introduce words germane to their own class units — triangle, global, president, extinct – that will reinforce learning and reasoning skills.

Word of the Month Poetry Challenge is not a writing program. It’s more like mental calisthenics to keep the imagination limber. When students who say they have nothing to write about realize they’ve taken a random word, considered it’s potential, made a list of approaches, and created a complete poem, they become proud, excited, and more confident of their writing abilities.

Word of the Month Poetry Challenge provides a significant experience for students who participate. You can read more about the value of using poetry as a teaching tool in my chapter on poetry (“Yes, Poetry Can!”) in Children’s Literature in the Reading Program, An Invitation to Read, published by International Reading Association in 2009.

Here is what one teacher wrote about her experiences with Word of the Month.

“David, as you know, I keep your word-of-the-month on my whiteboard. I use it for an alternate assignment during writing. Like adult writers, my students get stuck, hit a wall, have writers block. To loosen their cramped writing muscles, I let them write poetry. The fact that it might get posted and voted on is icing on the cake. And when they run up to show me a poem, I effuse over it, evaluate it and ask them to rewrite it, just as if it were our regular assignment.

I have to tell you what happened last week. (I’ve already changed the
names.) I teach combination classes (3rd/4th and now 4th/5th). We have high mobility at our school, but about a third of my students loop with me. On Tuesday, when I posted “book,” 5th-grade Ray didn’t know what a poem was. 4th-grade Jillian asked if we still had If I Were in Charge of the World (by Judith Viorst). I read it to them last year. She grabbed it out of the poetry box and proceeded to read it with him.

Then he grabbed his own book out of the poetry box. The idea spread through the room. The poetry box is nearly empty. So your word of the month is not only creating poetry writers, it’s creating poetry readers.”

Thank you,
Marjie DeWilde

Thanks for reading this. I hope you will encourage teachers in grades three and up to participate in Word of the Month Poetry Challenge. If you have comments or questions, please leave them for me to answer. Thanks very much.
David