Kenn Nesbitt has been announced as the next Children’s Poet Laureate.  Congratulations Mr. Nesbitt!

If you haven’t, you really need to check out his website Poetry4Kids.  His poems are funny and engaging and the kids LOVE them!  My current favorite is Xbox, Xbox and is about a child’s never-ending love for his video games.

I really like to use his poems for work with phonemic awareness.  I pull up the poem on the ActivBoard and read through it once or twice.  Then we get to work on whichever phonemic awareness skill we are working on.  If it is rhyming words, I say a word from the poem and students think of words that rhyme.  If it’s beginning sounds, I say a word (or more) from the poem and students say the beginning sounds.  The same goes for ending sounds, segmenting sounds, etc.

How do YOU use poetry in the classroom?