School Poetry

School Poetry

Bibliography:

Salas, Laura Purdie, and Steven Salerno. 2009. Stampede!: poems to celebrate the wild side of school. New York: Clarion Books. ISBN 978-0618914883

Summary/Analysis:

This collection of 18 poems by Laura Salas presents poems to students in a familiar school setting.  There is no index or table of contents in the book.  The mainly humorous poems focus on the different daily activities that students encounter on a school day.  There is a poem about a rainy day, recess, picture day, and lunch.  The poems are accompanied by cartoon style color illustrations that depict students as different animals (a pig splashing in mud puddles, a lost mouse in a maze, etc).  Most poems are rhyming (abcb) with one acrostic poem. The poems are easy to understand for most younger elementary students and with all of them focused on the theme of “school” most students will be able to form some sort of connection. The tone (light and funny) and the  amount of similes,metaphors, and personification used makes for a great teaching opportunity. 

Use:

Swarm

We crowd the empty schoolyard,

a flood of bumblebees.

We buzz and flitter-tumble,

trade gossip on the breeze.

I brought a kickball--

want to play?

I wonder what’s

for lunch today.

When the doors swing open wide,

we bumblebees all fly inside.

This poem represents a majority of the poems contained in the collection.  The poem features a metaphor comparing students to bumblebees and a simple ABCB rhyme scheme that is present in most of the poems.  The accompanied illustrations show students floating in the air while dressed in black and yellow stripes to resemble bees and have antennas on their heads.   

I would focus on the comparison of students to bumblebees and why the author decided to choose that type of animal.  Students would brainstorm another human activity (at school or elsewhere) and pick an animal that it would relate to.  Depending on the grade level students could write their own metaphors and then create a poem based on that animal and situation.