Poetry activities for kids with low literacy

The only poem I ever memorized was http://moonandsparrowblog.com/?p=502 by http://dennislee.ca/books/. I agree that music will probably help. I like songs that allow people to come up with their own rhymes, like http://www.songsforteaching.com/folk/downbythebay.php

I like tilde's suggestion of computer based magnetic poetry, but I'd also suggest you get some of the real stuff too: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000CBHTGA/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/, http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00003JATS/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/. Low literacy kids (and adults) often learn well with words they can pick up and move around.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0590963937/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/ is fantastic for kids (it's interspersed with little cartoon drawings and silly rhymes). You should definitely have one on hand. You could do something like have a kid write a poem using at least two new-to-them words that they find in the rhyming dictionary.

How about prizes for memorizing poems or parts of poems, even Dr. Suess stuff? Memorization is so, so good for little brains. Memorize a couple, you get X, memorize a stanza, you get Y, memorize a page or two, etc.... Invite them to recite what they've memorized in front of other kids for even more credit towards a prize.

I got this from a friend ... http://www.examiner.com/article/the-complete-10-week-poetry-for-kids-course One thing one of our teachers did was put words and ideas in a jar on little slips of paper. We'd pull a couple and write about it. A poem, a limerick, a little rhyming poem. And the kids this year, when they had an option to present their reports in one of four ways, had an option of a "rap" which is kind of poetry, right? Approach it that way. Also, put http://play.magneticpoetry.com/poem/Nature/kit/ on your white list and put them on the desktop for the computer literate kids. One thing our local library does is let kids "earn" to payback late fines by reading for X amount of time. Maybe have the same thing and extend it to poetry? have a visible "poet's tree" and the kids can write poems on leaves. Keep them in rotation, and give the kids a 'tree trunk' to take the leaves home eventually and decorate their own.

You may find something appropriate here: http://www.shelsilverstein.com/learning/poetry-month/

I loved (and still love) mad libs at that age. Could you have them complete some mad libs style poems, but have them select only rhyming words to create rhyming poems, or create your own mad libs from simple poems, but replace some of the words with blanks for them to fill in? It's easier for kids to recognize/read words than to spell them out, most of the time. In activities where they have to write, could you write out 3 or 4 words and have them find and choose the correct one? Also, I like to have kids write a sentence (or write a sentence out myself) and cut out the words individually. Then, scramble the words, and have kids put the words back in order to make a sentence. This could be fun with a haiku activity.

How about listening to a song, and either write down the lyrics or look them up online (both useful skills), and then a worksheet about what makes that like a poem. (rhymes, rhythm, metaphor, etc) For some kids, especially the struggling-readers that you describe, that will be way more appealing than opening a book to pick a poem. A next step might be to then have them read a poem from a book, and talk about how that is or isn't like a song.

* The kids generally read and write below their age level and have not had good experiences in school or school-like environments At one time, my sons both read above grade level but wrote below grade level (and had dysgraphia) and my oldest had a lot of reading comprehension issues. He also read late. He was 7.5 before the reading thing really caught on. It helped to do things with them orally, so I will second some kind of poetry slam (Rap music might also be a thing to try to work with). Illustrated works were also really helpful. So things like Dr. Seuss and Calvin and Hobbes were a big hit that helped my oldest get on firmer footing.