Poetry Lives at Literacy Conference

              Poetry Friday is hosted by Tara Smith at her wonderful blog, A Teaching Life.  Thanks Tara!

            I am in my second day of the Colorado Reading Association literacy conference in Denver, just across town, but worlds away from what I usually do.  I have seen some terrific presentations from Ralph Fletcher, Lucy Calkins, Tony Stead, Carol Ann Tomlinson, Gordon Korman and tomorrow will end with Kelly Gallagher.  For those of you who are teachers, or who work in education, you will know that I am full up and so inspired!  I will not share much tonight, but wanted to say on this Poetry Friday that more than one presenter used poetry in the presentation, in several ways. 

             Here is a poem some of you will know, and Lucy Calkins, in discussion of the poem, asked us to look at it from two different points of view, the mother’s and the daughter’s.  Lucy was discussing deeper analysis of text.  What kind of mother is this mother in the poem?  And what kind of child?  Will we agree, or will students see something we adults do not?  How can we open the possibilities to those students reading text that they bring much value from their own lives to their reading?  We want them to know that their opinions count, and that practice helps. 

The poem is To A Daughter Leaving Home by Linda Pastan. 

       It begins:

When I taught you
at eight to ride
a bicycle, loping along
beside you
as you wobbled away
on two round wheels,

and the rest is found here at The Poem Hunter.

I imagine you will bring your own ideas to this poem.


photo credit: theentiremikey via photopin cc