Words...Wonderful Words, Words, Words

Part I

Today I have The Grammar Lesson by Steve Kowit, a poem I found at Poetry 180. Having been a teacher for many years, the poem really appealed to me. I think you will understand why. Children certainly don’t get excited when being instructed about grammar and word usage in school. I think it would be fun to share this poem with students in a language arts classroom. I would suggest photocopying the poem on a transparency and showing it to students on an overhead projector. Here’s how the poem begins:


The Grammar Lesson
by Steve Kowit

A noun's a thing. A verb's the thing it does.

An adjective is what describes the noun.

In "The can of beets is filled with purple fuzz"

of and with are prepositions. The's

an article, a can's a noun,

a noun's a thing. A verb's the thing it does.

A can can roll - or not. What isn't was

or might be, might meaning not yet known.

"Our can of beets is filled with purple fuzz"

I think the poem is quite clever. You can read the rest of it here.


Part II

Kowit’s poem brought to mind some children’s books I suggest that students in the children’s literature course that I teach might consider using in the language arts curriculum.

The following books by Brian P. Cleary are three in his Words Are CATegorical series, which is published by Carolrhoda Books/Lerner Publishing Group. The books are written in rhyming verse and would be fun to read aloud.

TO ROOT, TO TOOT, TO PARACHUTE: What is a Verb?
Illustrated by Jenya Prosmitsky

A MINK, A FINK, A SKATING RINK: What Is a Noun?
Illustrated by Jenya Prosmitsky

UNDER, OVER, BY THE CLOVER: What Is a Preposition?
Illustrated by Brian Gable

Here’s an excerpt from Under, Over, By the Clover:

Prepositions
Show us where,

Like in
your bed,

beside the chair—

Under,
over,
by the clover,

About,
above,
or next to
Rover.

They tell us
time and also place,

Like past 9:30
in your face.

The prepositions stand out because they’re printed in colored text. The illustrations in all the books are humorous cartoon-style art, which add just the right amount of humor to books about language.

Check out Brian P. Cleary’s website. It has quizzes and games for kids, activities for teachers, a POW (Poem of the Week), a WOW (Word of the Week), and lots of other things for kids who are really “into” words. It also has some sound effects.

Cleary is also the author of…

RHYME & PUNISHMENT: ADVENTURES IN WORDPLAY
Illustrated by J. P. Sandy
Millbrook Press, 2006

This book is for middle readers and older kids…and for adults like me who enjoy PUNS! Here’s one of my favorite verses from the book’s first section, Music {Going for Baroque}.

They tune into the older films
and love to watch the dancing.
“There’s too much sax and violins now,
and not enough romancing.”

Here’s a cute one from the second section: Animals {Laugh Until You’re Horse}.

My dad predicts the weather,
and he toad my sister once,
“It looks a lot like reindeer,
so be sure to wear your pumps.”

At the bottom of most of the book’s pages, Cleary includes definitions of some of the “punny” words included in the poems.


Part III

WONDERFUL WORDS: POEMS ABOUT READING, WRITING, SPEAKING, AND LISTENING
Selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins
Illustrated by Karen Barbour
Simon & Schuster, 2004

This is a slim anthology of poems that teachers could also use in the language arts classroom. Poets whose works were selected for this book include Eve Merriam, Emily Dickinson, Pat Mora, David McCord, Rebecca Kai Dotlich, Nikki Grimes, and Karla Kuskin. The anthology opens with Dickinson’s poem 1212:

A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.

I say it just
Begins to live
That day.

Next, comes Eve Merriam’s Metaphor in which Morning is/a new sheet of paper/for you to write on. There’s also Dotlich’s Let’s Talk, which is a poem about how people use words to talk “about new robins /who appear/before winter/is through and to tell each other how they’ve been and how they feel…and to talk about good times that they’ve shared. In Finding a Poem, Kuskin advises a reader how to become a poet. Here are some of her suggestions from the poem: Unlock the weather/in your heart/Unleash a thousand whispers/let them shout.

The anthology fittingly ends with Richard Armour’s The Period, which closes like this…

“Get out of my way!”
Cries the sentence. “Beware!”
But the period seems not to hear or to care.
Like a stone in the road,
It won’t budge, it won’t bend.
If it spoke, it would say to the sentence,
“The end.”

Karen Barbour’s colorful gouache illustrations are stunning and add a bright and thoughtful dimension to the poems in this anthology.

Sara Lewis Holmes has the Poetry Friday Roundup at ReadWriteBelieve.