Slice of Life: Poetry Tournament

My job title for the after school program is “Reading Specialist,” but I much prefer “Reading Enricher” or “Lead Reader.” I am blessed with the freedom to be creative and to choose the books I share (and ostensibly, the lessons I teach.)

We spent National Poetry Month immersed in poetry. I chose matching pairs of poems by two of my favorite children’s poets, Douglas Florian and David Elliott. Their poems are similar: usually funny, often with puns or word play, and short enough to be just the right size for the small amount of time I have at each of my sites. I created a tournament bracket that pitted Hummingbird against Hummingbird, Barn Cat against Persian, Giraffe against Giraffe and Stegosaurus against Stegosaurus. 

As we read and discussed the poems before voting, the lessons of the children’s classroom teachers shone through their comments. The children identified and celebrated rhythm and rhyme. A third grader compared simile to metaphor. A fifth grade boy praised one poem’s hyperbole. Two fifth grade girls traded lines as they recited William Carlos Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow.” Kindergarteners identified (and preferred) the more positive message in Elliott’s “Stegosaurus:” 

“…there’s some-
thing more
to life
than just
intelligence.”

In the end, “Barn Cat” by David Elliott won the first side of the bracket, and Douglas Florian’s “Stegosaurus” won the second side. So it was 

The Barn Cat
by David Elliott

Mice
had better
think twice.

versus

Stegosaurus
by Douglas Florian

Ste-go-SAUR-us
Her-bi-VOR-ous
Dined on plants inside the forest.
Bony plates grew on its back,
Perhaps to guard it from attack.
Or to help identify
A Stegosaurus girl or guy.
Its brain was smaller than a plum.
Stegosaurus was quite DUMᗺ.

A group of older students at one of the sites helped me brainstorm a list of the qualities of poems to guide the final voting away from choice based on a favorite animal or illustration and towards rhythm, rhyme, word choice, details, and message: poems that make you think, poems that surprise you.

By a vote of 25 to 19, “Stegosaurus” by Douglas Florian won. It was valued most for its rhythm and rhyme, and for the humor in the surprising word choice at the end. “Barn Cat” owed its strong showing to the rhyme, the realism, and the way the reader has to think in order to understand the poem and its humor.