Kovalcik & Certo (2007). The Poetry Café is Open!

This piece discussed how a set of team teachers integrated poetry into their classroom in an extremely inviting manner. Each day the students were taught a mini lesson on a specific style of poetry. The students were given an explanation of the style of poetry and a published example of a poem written in that particular style. The next step for the students was writing; they were asked to write a poem of their own in the style of the day. Each student was provided with their own poetry book, which was constructed of five pieces of lined paper bound together with staples and covered with a colored piece of construction paper. Writing was encouraged at all times. In fact, if a student had some free time and was inspired to write, they were encouraged to take that spare time to write in their poetry books. The teachers believed that poetry is meant to be shared so they decided to let their students share the poems they had written. Two weeks prior to the performance, a letter was sent home and parents/family members were allowed to sign up for a day and time to come see their child perform. In preparation for this event, students practiced reading their poems in front of their classmates—students that were nervous about reading in front of other people got extra practice with the teachers at free times like recess. Each performance day, the teachers and students transformed their classroom into a café. They covered the desks with tablecloths and had food and drinks to complete the café atmosphere. (Kovalcic & Certo, 89-93)

I would love to use this type of approach in my classroom. At this point in my class, my students are only writing for themselves. I think that it is important for students to know that they are writing for a purpose. Most of my students are always eager to share their stories with me and I would like for there to be a time where this type of behavior would be encouraged. Like mentioned in another article for this week (with the student named Aurora), students need to know that they are writing for an audience. I think that more students would use the aspects they are taught within our writer’s workshop mini-lessons if they knew they were going to be sharing their work. I think this would fit in well with our curriculum because we have a reader’s and writer’s workshop every day. This could be cross curricular in these two subjects because students could write their stories during writer’s workshop and read each other’s stories during reader’s workshop. This type of activity would definitely enrich my students’ learning in writing again because it would give them a purpose.

As a professional I would need to learn the time management skills these teachers used in this activity. To me it seems like it would take a significant amount of time to plan and rehearse. I wonder if they were able to touch on all other subjects equally throughout the day in the time leading up to the “café opening.” I would like to know how they went about assessing the students individually and how they dealt with students who refused to perform (if this occurred). I also wonder what they did in the case of students with special needs. Depending on the family life of the children, I would wonder what to do in a situation where the child wanted to share their work with their family but the family refused to come. There would be a lot of extra work behind this activity, though I still think it is an excellent idea.

I found it useful to read about different types of assessment because I feel like I do not see much going on in my classroom currently. The only type of assessment that I have seen thus far is a few DRAs and we had a meeting with our reading interventionists. I also enjoyed the fact that one of the articles mentioned keeping anecdotal records. I found this especially helpful because I did not really understand the true purpose of these types of records before seeing how this teacher used them. I think it will be hard to meet the differing needs of all of my students and I wonder how it is done efficiently. I wonder if students still get left behind because they were never deeply assessed. I am still confused after reading the articles, however, because I feel like they all mentioned assessing small groups and using those assessments to form your lessons. I see how that would be time efficient, but I wonder if this is what you are truly supposed to do to be fair. I liked to see the teachers getting to know the students throughout the year and setting student specific goals for the students to individually meet. I think this is important to consider and to do because all students are coming from different levels. It is hard to say that it is fair to place all students at the same writing level when the same students are at completely different reading levels. I like that teachers work with the students’ prior knowledge instead of assuming that the student “should” know something.

Works Cited

Kovalick, B. & Certo, J (2007). The Poetry Café is Open!The Reading Teacher, 60(1), 89-93.