Posts tagged ‘nonfiction poetry’
122. Welcome to the Green House by Jane Yolen
Retell: Jane Yolen poetically compares the rainforest to a green house.
Topics: rainforest, animals, birds, nonfiction poetry
Units of Study: Nonfiction, Content-Area, Personal Essay
Habits of Mind: gathering data through all senses
Reading Skills: envisionment, inference
Writing Skills: using repetition, incorporating rhythm and rhyme, using sparkling vocabulary, using alliteration
My Thoughts: A few months ago I received a GrowLab through a DonorsChoose grant. We received support from an educator at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens and created corsage box terrariums. Students planted cuttings from three different plants that thrive in the rainforest. I plan on reading this book soon to support our gardening experience. The text in this book is so vivid that as I read it I can actually feel the humidity of the rainforest. It’s a great text for teaching students how to interpret metaphors. At the end of the book, the author writes a message to her readers encouraging us to find out more about saving the rapidly disappearing rainforest. Though it’s not technically a personal essay, you could use sections of the message as a mentor text.
111. Roberto Clemente: Pride of the Pittsburgh Pirates by Jonah Winter
Retell: This is the rags-to-riches story of Roberto Clemente. Not only was he an all-star player for the Pittsburgh Pirates, he was also a humanitarian who donated a great deal of his earnings to charity.
Topics: baseball, Puerto Rico, racism, poetry
Units of Study: Nonfiction, Social Issues, Content-Area
Tribes: personal best, mutual respect
Habits of Mind: persisting, thinking flexibly, striving for accuracy
Reading Skills: inference, interpretation, envisionment
Writing Skills: including similes, using commas in lists
My Thoughts: I like sports stories that emphasize the athlete’s character rather than just his/her athletic ability. This is a good book for showing persistence even in the face of adversity. The book describes how Clemente grew up playing baseball with a glove made out of a coffee-bean sack and baseballs made from old soup cans. Written in free verse but organized into two line stanzas, this is a great book to read as a model for students writing nonfiction poetry during the Content-Area unit.
9. Dogteam by Gary Paulsen
Retell: A moonlit night inspires the narrator to take his dogs on an exciting night ride.
Topics: dogs, dog sledding
Units of Study: personal narrative, content-area writing
Reading Skills: envisionment
Writing Skills: using active verbs, zooming in on a small moment, incorporating sensory details, adding suspense, inserting commas and semicolons, repetition
My Thoughts: Dogteam reads more like prose. In addition to including beautiful imagery, Paulsen’s book has many examples of how writers use all senses to describe a moment in time. Though I would categorize this as a personal narrative, one could also use this as a mentor text for writing nonfiction poetry.
Teachable Texts 