Did you know that Election Day is set for the Tuesday immediately following the first Monday in November? It can be as early as Nov. 2 or as late as Nov. 8-- which is the date this year! It's our opportunity as citizens to make our voices heard in choosing leadership at the local, state, and national levels. Whatever your political views, it's a privilege to participate in this important process. And this poem, "Voting," by Diane Mayr from The Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations captures this beautiful moment (in English AND Spanish).
This "Voting" postcard is also available at Pinterest here.
And here are the Take 5! activities that accompany this poem in the Celebrations book:
1. Present children with a choice between two bookmarks and challenge them to vote for their choice. Then share the title of the poem (“Voting”) and read it aloud slowly and clearly.
2. Divide the children into three groups and share the poem again. Have each group chime in on one of the key ”constituencies” mentioned in the poem (the word: town, state, or country) while you read the rest of the poem aloud.
3. Talk about how voting is both an opportunity to express an opinion and a responsibility to shape government in our town, state, and country—once they are 18.
4. Pair this poem with the picture book Vote! by Eileen Christelow (Clarion, 2003) and discuss the questions the dog and cat characters raise about the voting process that the children also share.
5. Connect with another poem about citizenship with “A Dream Come True” by Georgia Heard (September, pages 246-247), and with poems from Declaration of Interdependence: Poems for an Election Year by Janet Wong (PoetrySuitcase, 2012).
Check out my previous blog post on "Patriotic Poetry" complete with a list of 25+ poetry books on the topic here.
Now join Linda over at TeacherDance for this week's Poetry Friday fun. See you there!
10 comments:
Loving and sharing! Thank you for the resource you are to school librarians!
Great activity for helping kids not feel left out. I know my kids would like to vote. Next election, my oldest will be voting! Yikes!
Just now got back from early voting... feels GREAT!
I was just thinking of pulling out my copy of Janet's book. Thanks for the reminder and for this enthusiastic post. Good to see Diane's poem and the Take 5 activities. :)
I'm hoping that my state, New Hampshire, will get on the early voting bandwagon sometime in the near future. Thanks for featuring my poem for today!
It's good timing for this, a 'just right' poem by Diane. And I love the Declaration of Interdependence, but Vote! is a new picture book to me-will look for it, Sylvia! Thanks!
"Make your voice heard" - hallelujah! Perfect poem for the "season", Sylvia. =)
What a perfect poem for all democracies. We in Canada are following the U.S. political scene this year as if it were our own.
Hey, y'all! Thanks for stopping by and commenting. (I wish I could figure out how to reply to each comment!) So glad you enjoyed Diane's wonderful poem (THANK YOU, Diane!) and Janet's fantastic book (thank you, Jama), and this topic overall. In this crazy election season, it's so great to see the topic of VOTING itself get so much attention! Yay, democracy! Yay, poetry! :-)
Great post- short, but sweet, and packed with tons of resources. It was also an expensive post- just added tons of books to my Amazon shopping list. Looking forward to sharing the books and poems you recommended with my students. Thanks for all the great ideas!
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