April Halprin Wayland’s “World Wide Wag”

Reminder: PoetryTagTime is the first ever electronic-only poetry anthology of new poems by top poets for children. You can purchase the book for 99 cents at Amazon and read it on your Kindle or through the downloadable Kindle platform for your computer, cell phone, etc.

Previously: Rebecca Kai Dotlich

Next up: APRIL HALPRIN WAYLAND

Setting the Stage: Invite the children to share any observations they have made of their pets sleeping. How do their sleeping pets look and behave? What to they imagine their pets might be dreaming about?

Poetry Performance: As you share April Halprin Wayland’s poem, “World Wide Wag,” invite kids to join in on only the repeated word, “if.” Invite them to chant it out loud while the adult reads the rest of the words and lines. Put the word “if” on a colored index card and hold it up when it’s their turn to participate (helpful for non-readers or ESL/ELL students).

Just for Fun: Each two-line stanza of the poem is highly visual suggesting an image or scene. Invite the kids to create a simple cartoon picture of what is described (perhaps working in pairs on their favorite stanza). Then hold up each picture to cue reading the accompanying lines. Aspiring poets might try writing an “if” poem about imagining being a sleeping dog or a cat (or other favorite animal) or about their own sleeping pet.

Poem Links: Here are key words that connect this poem with other poems in the PoetryTagTime collection:
Dogs
Computers
Questions
Humor
Body
World
Sleep

Buy the book now, so you can share each poem along with the ideas and activities that follow here.

Next up for PoetryTagTime: Leslie Bulion


Posting (not poem) by Sylvia M. Vardell © 2011. All rights reserved.