Like Langer and Applebee (1987) I believe instructional scaffolding is important and vital in all areas of teaching. I plan to use scaffolding through reading books to my first graders such as Atlantic, Rainbow Soup (Brian Cleary). I want to compose these poems together as a class and then allow students to work cooperatively to compose their own. Persona poems allow students to write through another person, object or animals perspective. They force students to dig so deep into a character, animal, person in history or world that the character becomes a part of the student. This is truly where learning takes place. When students connect and relate to the character they are using higher order thinking skills taking information and creating something so out of the box.
I am so excited about this unit and introducing it to my students. I have so many ideas from black history month to living and non-living things. I can’t wait to begin.
