and Reading Achievement in a Third Grade Classroom

Today many children are having difficulty learning to read. Some parents are complaining about public schools not doing their job. On standardized tests, the reading scores are low and many children are neither excited about learning how to read or about going to school. The public school districts have gone back and forth from phonics to whole language and now the emphasis has shifted back to the teaching of phonics and phonemic awareness to teach reading. As teachers, we are tired of being tossed back and forth on this pendulum. We know that in the real classroom it is best to have a balance. How do teachers do that in their classrooms effectively? One way is to use new phonics-enriched textbooks. Another way is to use supplementary methods to stimulate phonemic awareness.

This discussion brought me to wonder if increased reading achievement can be realized by using poetry as a tool in the third grade classroom. Could reading scores be increased as a result? Would children be more enthusiastic about learning to read and go to school? Could using poetry hel

Murray, D. (1984). Write to Learn. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.

Poetry to Increase Phonemic Awareness

Lenz, Lisa (December 1992). Crossroads of Literacy and Orality - reading poetry aloud. Language Arts, 69, p.597-603.

Kutiper, K. and Wilson, P. (1993). Updating poetry preferences: A look at the poetry children really like. The Reading Teacher, 47, p. 28-34

Yopp, H. (1995). A test for assessing phonemic awareness in young children. The Reading Teacher 49, p.20-29.

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Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)