Poem of the Week

Holes

Holes are shy and dull and round.
They're nothing, but don't remind them.
They live in sweaters, socks and crowns.
In flutes and Swiss cheese, holes abound.
And they hardly ever make a sound.
And some end up in the lost and found.
But most are buried in the ground.
You have to dig to find them.
Holes.

by Tim Wynne-Jones

I am trying something new this month with my class.  I want to expose my students to poetry, but without taking lots of time to analyze it in a way that makes their eyes glaze over and puts them to sleep.  I also want the poetry to connect with other lessons, including science, music, geography and history.   To introduce the language arts block tomorrow, I will read the above poem outloud.  Then, over rest of the days of the week, I will read it aloud, project the poem, have the students read it aloud, have a copy ready for a poetry collection notebook, and once pasted in the notebook, have students illustrate the poem. 
 
I wasn't sure which poem to start with, so I began with Holes, a novel by Louis Sachar, that the class is reading for a novel study.  Googling "poems related to the book Holes",  I found a website that has a number of poems that do exactly that.  Now I have a selection of poems to choose from, like the above poem, that go along with the novel study.  Also, we are beginning a read aloud called The Maestro by Tim Wynne-Jones (the author of the poem), and this will give the students another connection to the poem.  The most important thing for me as a teacher for this class, besides creating a safe learning environment, is broadening my students' schema.