Friday, February 13, 2015

Poetry Friday: Valerie Worth

I shared last month about how I use the incomparable Love that Dog to structure my poetry writing unit in third grade. We are wrapping up that unit this week, and I wanted to share one of my favorite books to accompany Love that Dog.


For years, I had used some of Valerie Worth's original published poetry collections (all together in All the Small Poems and Fourteen More) to share with my students after reading her poem, Dog, as part of Love that Dog. A few years ago, I discovered that Steve Jenkins had taken a subset of Valerie Worth's small poems about animals: Animal Poems (2007) by Valerie Worth and illustrated by Steve Jenkins.

Steve Jenkins' collage work adds another dimension to these incredible little poems. My students really found the illustrations appealing and spent a lot of time examining them while reading the poems.

Valerie Worth uses description in powerful ways in her poetry. I appreciate how simple many of these poems appear on the outset but how they are actually packed full of layers of meaning.



This week's Poetry Friday Roundup is being curated by Cathy Mere at Merely Day by Day. See the whole list of hosts at Poetry Friday by Kitlitosphere.

11 comments:

  1. I love Valerie Worth's work and paired with Steve Jenkins you just can't go wrong!

    Cathy

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    1. Absolutely! His collage work is stunning and really breathes new life into these great poems.

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  2. Replies
    1. Absolutely! His collage work is stunning and really breathes new life into these great poems.

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  3. You can NEVER go wrong with the poetry of Valerie Worth.

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  4. You can NEVER go wrong with the poetry of Valerie Worth.

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  5. Kathy, did I tell you that I shared your students' poetry for the Love That Dog lesson with the 4th grade teachers that I work with? I asked them to give you feedback when they show their students your students' work. The teachers were shocked that the poetry was written by 3rd graders. I have a new group of teachers to work with next week and plan to use the same works with them. Now I will share the poem by Valerie Worth and the illustration by Steven Jenkins. Thank you for the resources.

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    Replies
    1. You're welcome, Carol! Thank you for the update, and I look forward to hearing about the additional presentation too. I'm so glad they are enjoying the poems and resources.

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