Poetry

"A Frog in the Bog"

Karma Wilson & Joan Rankin

This book is a great book to read to students when using or teaching poetry.  Not only does this story have a great amount of rhyming, but it also allows students to predict what will come next.  For younger student, they will really engage in this type of poetry because throughout the story, it is very repetitive so students can guess or we can work together to put everything together for our prediction!

In A Frog in the Bog, "There's a frog on the log in the middle of the bog.  A small, green frog on a half-sunk log in the middle of the bog...".  As you can tell, each ending of the sentence rhymes with beginning parts of the sentence.  Each page adds on a new element but is then followed by this statement above.  This will be a great way for the students to realize a pattern and eventually read aloud with me when they realize what comes next, every time.

I would definitely read this book to my students when covering poetry.  While reading this book, I will expect my students to catch the repetitive quote on every page that way they can help me read the story.  I could also incorporate this book into a lesson over the letter "F" or a lesson over frogs.  Throughout this book, there are different bugs that are introduced that frogs eat (flies, ticks, fleas).  

While teaching poetry, it is always fun to incorporate activities in which the students can relate to or are interested in.  Rhyming is the best way to get a child familiar with the topic, especially when it is repetitive.  Many teachers may go to Dr. Seuss which is a very common author in the poetry genre.  I would also love to use his stories.  But I think there is a lot more useful stories to help the younger aged students (pre-school) in which my book is relating to.