Please, Call on Me

Craft and structure

Phonological awareness

Whole Group: choral read-aloud; Morning Meeting: shared reading

• In this issue: “Sticky Situation: Do I Need Help?”
• Suggested book: My Mouth Is a Volcano! by Julia Cook. This book helps children learn to wait their turn to speak.

• Make a small idea web or facilitate a discussion on what students know about poetry.
• Explain that poems are organized in lines. Have students work in partnerships to count the number of lines that are in “Please, Call on Me.”
• Tell students you will read the poem a few times. For the first read, have students listen and think about the poem’s meaning. What does the speaker want? What happens at the end?
• For the second read, have students follow along in their magazines. Exaggerate the rhyming words as you read. Ask them if they notice anything about how the words sound. After reading, help children understand that poetry is often written using rhyme.
• Finally, ask students to draw lines connecting pairs of rhyming words. They can work with a partner or this can be done as a group.

• Skills: Print features/School helpers (15 minutes)

Skills: Reading fluency (10 minutes)

• Poetry lends itself to repeated readings over days. You can have children practice reading fluently with expression.
• Practice for a poetry performance. Divide the poem up so that each child has one or two lines of poetry.
• Try reading the poem out loud in a round-robin. Invite students to act out the words or add movements that match the feeling of the words they are saying in the lines.
• You can also have them work in groups to create recordings of the poem. Remind them to say the words with feeling!