• Poetry celebrates self-expression and can bring much pleasure to readers and writers.
• Poetry, because it is generally brief and vivid, is appropriate for all children in a classroom, despite diverse reading and writing ability levels.
• Poetry is made accessible to children by helping them understand its special characteristics and how these work.

• understand that poetry differs from prose; poets use line breaks to create rhythm or sound, to signal meaning, and sometimes to give poems a particular appearance.
  
  
• explore various poems and think about why lines are broken where they are in poetry.
  
  
• experiment with line breaks and how they affect rhythm, sound, meaning, and appearance, and can substitute for punctuation in poetry.

1. "Bubbles" poem (see Three Poems resource) written on chart paper, or use the copy in the Line Break Explorer. A PowerPoint copy of the "Bubbles" poem and related discussion questions is also available.
2. Copies for each student of two poems (see Three Poems resource): "Ninjas" and "Daughter, Mother, Daughter." (Or select similar poems from Web Resources or books of poetry, such as those listed below; or include poems you have written to model your literacy for students.)
3. Suggested poetry books:
   
   • Adoff, Arnold. 1991. In for Winter, Out for Spring. NY: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.
     This book of poems is particularly playful with respect to line breaks.
     
   • Greenfield, Eloise. 1986. Honey, I Love and Other Love Poems. NY: HarperTrophy.
   • Hopkins, Lee Bennett. 1990. Good Books, Good Times. NY: Harper Collins.
   • Pomerantz, Charlotte. 1980. The Tamarindo Puppy and Other Poems. NY: Greenwillow.
     Poems in English and Spanish celebrate the joy of playing with sound and rhythm.
4. Chart paper or board space for writing ideas.

1. Gather resources, deciding which poems you will use and making the necessary copies.
2. Copy the poem "Bubbles" on chart paper.
3. This lesson assumes some prior exposure to poetry. The books and Web sites under Resources can be used to broaden students' experiences with poetry before staring this lesson.

1. Ask students to brainstorm characteristics of poetry (e.g., they may say "descriptive" or "rhyming"), and, one at a time, to write their ideas on the board or chart paper. Ask students to elaborate on their contributions, if possible, saying anything they think they know about rhyming or description, for example, or where their attitudes about poetry might come from, if these come up in the discussion. Be sure to explain that the brainstormed list represents our ideas now. We will find that our ideas about poetry change as we learn more about it and that everything on the list may not be accurate. Explain that today we will focus on one defining feature of poetry—line breaks. If this is not already on the list in some form, add it, and ask students to tell what they think it is. Most basically, this is what makes poems look different from prose.
2. As a group look at the poem "Bubbles" on chart paper or online. Tell students to notice the line breaks. Why are they where they are? Emphasize that this is the authors’ decision. Talk about how the poem might be different (appearance, meaning, emphasis, how you read it aloud) if the line breaks were different. Try rewriting it and reading it aloud with the same words but different line breaks suggested by the students. See what happens to the sound, meaning, and appearance. Notice the shape (round like a bubble). Do you think the author did this on purpose? Is there any punctuation? Why or why not?
3. Next students will work in small groups looking at two poems—"Ninjas" and "Daughter, Mother, Daughter"—as has just been modeled in the large group: reading them aloud, discussing the line breaks, and experimenting with changing them. Circulate and support small group work. As groups finish, or as follow-up, students can explore the Line Break Explorer Web Resource where they can move words around and manipulate line breaks in a poem online. To reset the words, students can refresh the page.
4. After about 10-15 minutes ask each small group to share with the whole what they noticed or discovered about the line breaks. Add anything they may not have noticed, for example, that some poets use line breaks instead of punctuation and others use both, or that line breaks create rhythm. Share any books or poems you might have gathered that offer other good examples of how line breaks function (see Resources). Students may peruse these independently or in groups to reinforce and extend their understanding of how line breaks function.

Poetry Teachers
http://www.poetryteachers.com/

Examples of all sorts of poetry and ideas for how to teach poetry. Many follow-up ideas to this lesson.

Line Break Explorer
http://www.readwritethink.org/materials/lb_explorer/index.html

The Line Break Explorer highlights the key considerations that come into play when making line breaks for the poem "Bubbles"; then the tool provides students the opportunity to try rearranging line breaks in two poems. Similar to magnetic poetry, this site encourages experimentation.

1. Observe students' involvement in looking at and talking about the poems presented. Are students engaged, interested, and trying to do the activities?
   
   
2. Listen to children's contributions. Do they all contribute background knowledge about poems and form hypotheses about line breaks? Do each one's comments reflect understanding of:
   • Line breaks as special to poetry?
   • Line breaks as a deliberate choice by the poet?
   • How line breaks affect a poem's sound, meaning, and appearance?
   • How line breaks can substitute for punctuation?
3. Look at students' writing. Do they experiment with line breaks? Do their line breaks contribute to the sound, meaning, or appearance of their poems? Can they explain why they broke the lines the way they did?

NCTE/IRA Standards

1 - Students read a wide range of print and nonprint texts to build an understanding of texts, of themselves, and of the cultures of the United States and the world; to acquire new information; to respond to the needs and demands of society and the workplace; and for personal fulfillment. Among these texts are fiction and nonfiction, classic and contemporary works.

2 - Students read a wide range of literature from many periods in many genres to build an understanding of the many dimensions (e.g., philosophical, ethical, aesthetic) of human experience.

3 - Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).

6 - Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (e.g., spelling and punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and discuss print and nonprint texts.