Chapter 4, and Invitations

I have never really been a huge fan of poetry. However, I love the different examples of ways you could introduce poems, and I think that poetry is something that children do enjoy, at least for a little while. I think that as soon as you put requirements on poetry, it becomes something that children, or just students in general do not enjoy. For example, I hated being given a prompt, and knowing that I had to write a 10 line poem about trees. But, for our "Where I am From" poems yesterday, we were really able to write about whatever we wanted, and it could be as short or as long as we wanted, and that made it so that it wasn't so mundane and stressful. I think that this is something to keep in mind when introducing poetry to our students, and we should not put guidelines on them, at least in the beginning.

With Invitations, I think that they are great ways to learn. One thing that I liked about them was, according to the chapter, "Invitations are also opportunities for students to delve deeper into issues in their live or engage in comparative discussions about their experiences and relationships." I think that this is really important, because the more connection between the classroom and home, the better.