Betsy Franco’s “Crow”

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: Lee Bennett Hopkins

Next up: BETSY FRANCO

Setting the Stage: Ask the children if they’ve ever seen a crow. Just one or many? How many? Where and when? What did they look like/sound like? How did the crows behave? If possible, look for crow sightings nearby (or on YouTube or nature web sites).

Poetry Performance: Read Betsy Franco’s poem, “Crow,” aloud first, showing the text, if possible. Then invite the children to practice their cawing crow voices to read the following key crow words and actions in the poem out loud (while you or a volunteer read the rest): Yippee/ you caw/ you drop/ and drop/ and drop/ and poke and peck/ yackity-yak/ raucous friends.

Just for Fun: Franco’s poem is a “poem of address,” as if she is talking to the crow itself. Invite the kids to look for other similar poems that “speak” to their subject as “you.” Aspiring writers may want to try their hands at creating their own original poems of address.

Poem Links: Here are key words that connect this poem with other poems in the PoetryTagTime collection:
Birds
Crow
Food
Friends
Onomatopoeia

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

Next up for PoetryTagTime: Douglas Florian



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