Memorizing poetry is something that we don’t have a lot of experience in, so I was excited when I was chosen to review a set from Institute for Excellence in Writing called Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization.
I’ll break it down further in a moment, but at a glance, the set includes a spiral-bound Teacher’s Manual, a set of 5 audio CDs, and a bonus DVD. Not only that, but you get a bonus Student Book as an e-book and an online download of seven audio MP3s. IEW was generous enough to send us a print spiral-bound Student Book, which is also available for purchase if you’d rather not print this out yourself.
Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization
Teacher’s Manual
The Teacher’s Manual is 200 pages, and it includes a large section introducing the program and really walking you through the science and reasoning behind it. It talks about communications, why memorization is so critical, and why poetry is a natural choice for memorization.
There is also a section about Mastery Learning and about the 4 Talent Education Pillars which are the four principles by which children acquire fluency. The Teacher’s Manual then goes on to tell about how modern learning methods are failing to teach our students, and gives more information about mastery learning. If this is something you want to dive more into, I highly recommend listening to the MP3 downloads that come as a bonus, as well as watching the bonus DVD that comes with this set! Andrew Pudewa goes into much deeper detail there, and it’s enjoyable to listen to.
Next, the manual goes over the program set-up and how to teach it. All students, regardless of age or grade level, begin with Level 1. You provide the poem to the student (we used the Student Book copy), listen to the poem on Audio CD (and read it together as well), recite it and practice it every day, and do so for as long as it takes to be recited correctly and easily, without hesitation.
Students can move through at their own pace, or some teachers may want to devote one week to one poem. We found that we were able to move through a little quicker than that with my 11 year old and 9 year old, but this program can be used with students much younger and they may take a bit longer. Students from kindergarten up will enjoy this program!
One aspect that I found interesting was that they recommend continuing to practice all of the poems throughout the entire program. Just because they memorized Poem 1 from Level 1 in the first 3 days doesn’t mean they’ll remember it 7 weeks down the road! It is stressed and encouraged to continue practicing and reciting all poems throughout the year.
There are 5 Levels of the program. The first 4 levels are poems, and the last level contains excerpts of famous speeches. Each level contains 20 selections for students to work through and memorize to be able to recite easily. My kids loved all of the ones from Level 1 that we were able to get through. Of course, their favorite was the very first one, “Ooey Gooey,” because it was so short and silly. Doing this one got them hooked on the program, and they were excited to continue to learn even more!
As we kept going through the different poems, my kids started to realize that it wasn’t much different than memorizing the lyrics to their favorite songs, and that with continuous exposure, it wasn’t difficult to get it.
The Teacher’s Manual includes all of the poems, divided by Level, though they are not illustrated. For student copies, you’ll want to refer to the student book.
In the Apependix of the book, there is a section of biographies of each of the authors of the selections in the program. There is also a bibliography.
Finally, the Teacher’s Manual includes a section on Optional Lesson Enhancements. This is awesome for people that love unit studies or just want to create fun activities around each of the poems to further help their students remember what they’ve learned. For example, after learning the poem “The Little Man”, students can learn about poetic elements by finding the rhyming words and the phonograms. For vocabulary, they can discuss imaginary friends. For science, your students can study the architecture of the many kinds of stairs.
Student Book
The student pages, included with the set as an e-book for you to print as needed, make the program even more fun for the kids. We were fortunate enough to receive a spiral-bound softcover copy of this, so I didn’t need to print anything out, but I love knowing that I have access to the printable files in the future for making additional copies for my own students. This makes the program an even better deal, because it can be used over and over with all of my students!
The Student Pages book has 171 pages and contains all of the same poems as the Teacher’s Manual. They are separated by level, just like in the Teacher’s Manual. There is also a Getting Started guide page for each level, which includes instructions on how to complete the level. It also contains a numbered list of each poem, and then a checklist below to mark off when each poem has been recited once learned.
Each poem is illustrated with line drawings, making them perfect for coloring or doodling on while listening to the audio CD or listening to their parent recite the poem. It’s also a fun activity for them to do when they’re working on their daily practice. It actually gets them to get their hands on the page, increasing the likelihood that they’ll do the work! 🙂
The last poem in each level is left open for students to add in a personal selection. I think this is genius, because now that students are getting totally used to the idea of memorizing poetry, surely they have a good idea of something they would like to memorize. Just have them copy or attach it to the blank part of the page, and they can work on memorizing and reciting that as the final thing before completing the level. There are suggestions in the Teacher’s Manual, or you can look at the bibliography in the back for ideas.
At the end of each section, there is a certificate of completion for you to fill out with their name, date, and your signature on it. What a fun thing to be able to stick in their language arts portfolio or to hang on the wall! Memorizing all of those poems is a great achievement, and when done, they’re ready to start the next level.
This book also contains the same biographies and bibliography in Appendix 1 and Appendix 2, just like in the Teacher’s Manual.
Audio CDs
There are 5 audio CDs. Each one contains a different level of the program (Level 1, Level 2, and so forth) for further exposure to the poetry included in the Poetry Memorization program. It simply contains short audio files of each individual poem for that level being recited in the way that the students are expected to recite it.
This is awesome for those times when you want your child to practice the poems, but you aren’t able to be right there with them.
I would have my kids listen to them on their own a few times a day so that the next time we got together for me to listen to them recite it, they had immersed themselves in it through reading, speaking, and hearing it.
Bonus MP3s
These downloads are available once you have purchased the set, and includes the following MP3 files:
- Ten Thousand Times and Then Begins Understanding
- On Listening
- On Speaking
- On Reading
- On Writing
- Mastery Learning, Ability Development, and Indivudualized Education
and - Nurturing Competent Communicators
My favorite one was “Ten Thousand Times and Then Begins Understanding” because it talked about the value in repetition. This is absolutely critical to being able to learn things, yet our society doesn’t seem to value trying and trying and trying some more. It really put things into perspective for me as so many things in our curriculum rely on lots of repetition and practice work. Now I’ll put a higher value on it, too! It really makes sense.
Bonus DVD
This DVD is a lecture by Andrew Pudewa. It is entitled “Nurturing Competent Communicators.”
One of the things that really stood out to me while watching this DVD was when he mentioned that kids speak at their highest level with their very best vocabulary and speech when they are with children around 2 years younger than them. It puts them in instant teacher mode, so they do their best. He said they actually do their worst when around same-aged peers. They simplify their speech when interacting with kids their own age. It makes me thankful that we’re able to homeschool with staggered ages!
He also mentioned that the 4 sources of language are media, peers, parents, and books. With speed-reading, kids can totally miss all of the different subtle and complex nuances in the literature, too. These 4 sources don’t push kids to store sophisticated English in their minds either, so he proposes reading out loud! It slows us down, we don’t miss any parts of the books, and families are all exposed to sophisticated language and work on understanding, as well as practicing using it.
There were many other great points, and he has many suggestions to but those were the ones that stood out to me!
We’re enjoying this program. I totally understand now why it is so important to have a program where students are asked to memorize something. The sheer amount of practice that it takes is a wonderful discipline to teach children (and adults!) and will help them to organize their language and thoughts for the rest of their lives.
We did the program for a few minutes every afternoon. I included my 6, 9, and 11 year old children. We worked on one poem a week, so we are not even halfway through Level 1 yet. I decided to do it this way so we could all easily work on it together, but I know I could have simply moved on when my older kids got it before the week was up. I figure that as long as we are moving forward and having fun, it’s a huge win for us!
I would give the poem’s student page to my kids (I made copies for 2 of my kids and used the spiral-bound book for one of them) while we listened to the selection on the audio CD. Then we would practice reading it together. My kids would usually doodle on their sheets or color on there during that time.
Later that day, I would have them try to recite the poem from memory. They would do as much as they could and then I would have them study their sheet again to try and get the rest. We did this daily until they memorized it. It did take my 6 year old slightly longer to get the poems than my older kids, but I was pleased that they were retaining these poems by the end of the week, and remembering ones that we had completed in the weeks before!
This is a great program, and as with other IEW programs, I would highly recommend it.
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