National Poetry Month: Visualization

Another one of my
favorite activities is to use poetry to teach visualization.  Since I
teach this during testing, I try to add in some interesting hands on element to
the lesson.

I project this poem by Rachel
Fields.

Grandmother’s
Brook

Grandmother tells me about a brook

She used to pass on her way to school;

A quick, brown brook with a rushing sound,

And moss-green edges, thick and cool.

When she was the age I am now

She would cross over it, stone by
stone.

I like to think how she must have looked

Under the greenery, all alone.

Sometimes I ask her: “Is it there,

That brook you played by— the same,
today?”

And she says she hasn’t a doubt it is-

It’s children who change and go away.

First I talk about how to make friends and
understand a poem.  I read the poem two
times.  Then I read it line by line and
talk about what I notice in the poem. 
Some of the things we discuss are:

Click Here to Download

     Students go back to their seats and use pencil to draw in the brook as the background of the poem.  I have them use the entire page- even over the words. Students illustrate what they visualize when we read the poem.  I encourage students to use the details that we learned from the poem.  For example we know the color of the brook, the trees around it, there is a school house, the stones across the brook and so on.

Then I pull out the big guns. I give students water color paints and have them paint what they visualize.  Once again, it is a great way too cool sown after a long say of testing and is still academic.