Competency #1--Related Blog

One of the most useful and interesting blogs about poetry that I have seen is written by TWU professor Dr. Sylvia Vardell. The title of her blog is Poetry for Children: About Finding and Sharing Poetry with Young People. I located Dr. Vardell's blog using Google Blog Search (http://blogsearch.google.com/ ). The URL for Poetry for Children is http://poetryforchildren.blogspot.com/. The purpose of the blog is to review poetry books and to promote the reading of poetry, especially to and by children. Dr. Vardell ties poetry in with special days like Earth Day, National Siblings Day and Limerick Day.

I chose this blog for several reasons:

1. Dr. Vardell is a well-known and well-respected author and professor in the field of poetry for children. 2. Information presented on her blog is likely to be accurate and reliable. 3. Her posts feature reviews of poetry books as well as links to other sites about poetry. 4. She includes poems or parts of poems in most of her posts. 5. The blog would be a good tool for a librarian looking for books to add to a school's poetry collection. 6. Dr. Vardell presents ideas for using poetry to further education. 7. The blog is just fun to read.

Here is one example of how Dr. Vardell links poetry to core subject areas.

"One Sample Curricular Area: Physical Science

As we introduce children to physical science and the concepts of motion, matter, energy, atoms, light, heat, electricity, and magnetism, poetry can help pave the way. The rhyming shape poems of Flicker Flash by Joan Bransfield Graham explore the different ways that light appears in our world, from the flicker of birthday candles to a flash of lightning. Read them aloud by flashlight for added effect. A natural complement is Anna Grossnickle Hines poetry book, Winter Lights (Greenwillow 2005) or Marilyn Singer’s Central Heating: Poems About Fire and Warmth (Knopf 2005).Three of Jane Yolen’s poetry collections look at water in its varying forms: Once upon Ice and Other Frozen Poems (Boyds Mills Press 1997), Snow, Snow: Winter Poems for Children (Boyds Mills Press 1998) and Water Music: Poems for Children (Boyds Mills 1995), all illustrated with stunning photographs. For more “wet” poetry, consult Joan Bransfield Graham’s Splish Splash (Houghton Mifflin 2001), Constance Levy’s Splash!: Poems of Our Watery World (Orchard 2002), and Ralph Fletcher’s Water Planet: Poems about Water (Arrowhead, 1991). Many of these water poems lend themselves to reading aloud along with props such as soap bubbles, Christmas tree “icicles,” or audiotapes of waterfalls or the ocean surf." (Thursday, March 20, 2008 post--used with Dr. Vardell's permission)