Poetry Basket

I love to teach phonics skills with poetry.  There is so many good poems available.  These are the poems I have found over the years that I enjoy teaching with.   

In kindergarten I taught two or three poems a month. We would highlight our sight words, rhyming words and punctuation. 

Now in first grade, I teach one poem a week. I also send home a homework sheet to follow up on the poem. Again we highlight sight words, short vowel/long vowel sounds, blends, digraphs, compound words, contractions, rhyming words, nouns, verbs, adjectives and punctuation   No....I do not do all those skills in one poem.  I pick and choose what is appropriate and what goes along with our spelling and language arts lessons.   

                                               Going to School                 Leaves

           Down! Down!                            Little Owl                               Scary Scarecrow 

      ABC Thanksgiving                  Peace Treaty                       Pilgrim Song

Reindeer                     Waddling Penguins          Little Penguin

Snowman                            Groundhog                      Leprechauns

I Like Stars                     Astronaut          Fish Alive       

    Ladybugs

             Start of School       I Like Jam           I Can Read

       Fall Leaves              Grow Food         Hairy Scary Spider

      Spooky Bats            Halloween is Coming    Woodland Animals

      If You Smile At A...     What Do You See in...   Five Fat Turkeys

     Albuquerque Turkey              Trees              Santa's Elf

     Snow Surprise            Romp and Play        A Trip to the Zoo

    Jump or Jiggle              March                Books Are Good!

  We Are One World         Rainbow Paintbox            Monkey's Meal

   The Water Cycle         My Teddy Bear      Winter, Spring, Summer

                 The End

If you are looking for more poems check out this poetry book it has a ton of amazing poems.  This is where I found most of my First Grade poems. Ms. Moore has put together an great collection of poems for the school year.  It has Holidays and concepts poems.  It is a must have if you like to teach with poems.   

Source

Each week my students receive black and white copies that they keep in their poetry notebooks.(1 inch binders with clear pocket covers)

I also put a color copy of the poems in my poetry basket.  The students enjoy reading the poems from kindergarten and first grade with their buddies. They also like to read the poems ahead of time and try and guess each week which poem might be next.