Anne Hutchinson 2nd Graders Celebrate Poetry

Anne Hutchinson second graders transformed the school lunchroom into a poetry cafe last week, as the young learners showed off their newfound understanding of verse and rhyme schemes at the first-ever 2nd Grade Poetry Celebration. 

With their parents looking on encouragingly, students recited one—or more—of the poems they had written over the course of the four-week poetry unit, demonstrating their growing comfort with the creative writing process as well as their emerging confidence as public speakers. 

Second-grade teacher Carolyn Keane noted that this is the first year Anne Hutchinson has held the poetry celebration and that the children dazzled their guests with myriad poetic styles, including acrostic and noun-verb poems.

The poetry unit, she added, asks students to use the basic building blocks of literacy to convey more abstract ideas while enhancing their understanding of the English language. 

“Poetry can help them in a variety of ways, including using more descriptive words in their regular everyday writing and looking at things from different angles,” said Keane. “And because we worked on different types of poems, we saw that some of the students really got into the acrostic poems, while there were others who really enjoyed working on poems that asked them to look in the mirror and write about what they saw.

“That was especially popular with some of our more introspective students,” she added.

Keane said that presenting to class parents represents an important aspect of the unit, both as a way for students to demonstrate the skills that they have been learning over the last four weeks and because the opportunity to read their poems aloud speaks to their growing ability to communicate through writing. 

“An important part of the writing process is sharing the writing,” said Keane. “It makes the process more purposeful and gives the students an opportunity to share the work that they are most proud of.”

Keane said she hopes the Poetry Celebration will continue to serve as the culmination to the second-grade poetry unit and that parents continue to delight in their children’s ongoing growth as writers. 

“We definitely hope to do this again,” said Keane. “The parents were thrilled with the way the children were using the language, and it gave them a better idea of the things that we are working on every day in the classroom.”