Poem of the Month

Destination Mars

Poetry is a great way to engage and energize students, filling their minds with language in preparation for an enjoyable and productive literacy block.

The poetry lessons in JillE Literacy are short, repeated shared reading experiences that boost language and literacy skills in small chunks of time. This makes them a perfect warm-up or transition activity that helps all students experience reading success and develop a positive learning mindset.

The built-in 5-day lesson plan on the back of every poster-size Poetry Card makes it easy to read and reread the poem over the course of a week, building new literacy skills each day. All the planning is already done so teachers can spend less time planning and more time teaching.

Here are some sample questions and prompts from the 5-day lesson plan:

DAY 1	Support comprehension, oral language, and critical thinking by leading discussion about the illustration, reading the poem, and having students ask and answer questions. What kind of poem do you think this might be? What makes you think that? What line or lines in this poem did you like the best? What made you like them? If Martians did exist, what questions could you ask them?
DAY 2	Build vocabulary by rereading the poem together, focusing on domain-specific, multiple-meaning, and invented words and identifying strong verbs and descriptive adjectives. After rereading the poem, discuss the words stratosphere, atmosphere, navigate, meteorites. Establish what these words mean. Ask students: What other word(s) could have been used instead? Discuss what the word whip means as it is used in this poem. Talk about how else the word whip can be used to mean something different.
DAY 3	Develop reading fluency by calling attention to punctuation and illustrative text and rereading with expression. Discuss the punctuation in the poem and how these provide clues to how the poem should be read. Read the poem out loud together, focusing on the punctuation clues to read with pace and expression.
DAY 4	Reinforce, practice, and apply phonics and spelling skills by identifying spelling patterns, segmenting multisyllabic words, and discussing possessive apostrophes and contractions. Write the word knobbly on the board. Underline the spelling pattern for the /n/ sound (kn). Ask: What other words have this spelling pattern? What other spelling patterns are there for the /n/ sound? (n, gn, nn) Clap and count the syllables in navigate, stratosphere, atmosphere, meteorites. Discuss the apostrophes in Earth’s, I’d, we’d, they’d and what they mean.
DAY 5	Tap into creativity and performance by providing opportunities for recitation, movement, music, illustration, and other forms of creative response. Divide into groups: one group saying the poem, one group adding movement, and one adding sounds using body percussion, percussion instruments, or environmental materials. Make a tune for the poem or say it as a rap. Encourage students to illustrate a line in the poem that is not depicted in the illustration.

“Destination Mars” is part of the Grade 3 Whole-Class Resources kit but can be enjoyed by children and teachers of all ages!

Sign up or log in to read the poem and to download the 5-Day Lesson Plan and printable Blackline Master from the Related Resources section below.

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Check back next month for a brand-new JillE Literacy poem to share with your students!