That One Day

Every Monday Lauren and I introduce a new poem to our class which connects to some event or topic of interest under examination. The topics range from the tooth fairy to birthdays to friendship to numbers and beyond. The repeated readings of these poems support fluent reading, concepts of print, grammatical structures and spelling.

Each week we choose five words from the poem which become our spelling words for the week. This context provides a genuine purpose for the words while grounding the new vocabulary. I must give credit for this idea to my friends Cindy G. and Cindy A. who teach second grade. They introduced me to this concept in June while I was observing their class as part of a study I was conducting. I cannot stress the importance of sharing information through class visits. Fresh ideas are swirling around out there if you are available to catch them.

In addition to sending home copies of these poems each week for the children to read and practice with their families, we have made them available through our class page on our school website.

In December I took a workshop and learned how to include video on our class page. Since that time Lauren and I have discussed the possibility of videotaping ourselves reading the poem in both American Sign Language and English so that parents can see how we interpret the poem.

This past Friday we did just that with for our upcoming poem entitled simply Martin Luther King Jr. poem. I found this poem here as I was searching the Internet but I do not know the author.

Martin Luther King Jr. Poem

Let us dance, let us sing.
In praise of Martin Luther King.
A man of peace who stood up tall.
He worked for fairness for us all.
We must be kind to one another,
Because he said, 'All men are brothers."
So let us try as we dance and sing,
To be like Martin Luther King.

Two excellent children's books that are exceptional in detailing the life of Martin Luther King and his gentle approach to hatred and bigotry are:

Martin's Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (the cover of this book is at the top of the post) by Doreen Rappaport and Bryan Collier.

and

My Dream of Martin Luther King by Faith Ringgold.

I actually met both Faith Ringgold and Bryan Collier. She presented at the 31st Annual Summer Literacy Institute in the Summer of 2002 at Fordham University and he came the following year. Both have an amazing catalog of children's books. In addition to the two I already listed you might want to check out Uptown by Bryan Collier and Tar Beach by Faith Ringgold.