News Release - Read and Understand Poetry

Contact Us | Download a PDF | Return to News Room |

Read and Understand Poetry Makes Poetry Accessible to Young Students

New resource from Evan-Moor Educational Publishers allows learners to read and respond to poetry all year long

MONTEREY, CALIF. (April 6, 2005) - As elementary schools celebrate National Poetry Month in April, teachers will be looking for resources that enhance enjoyment and understanding of this literary form. Evan-Moor Educational Publishers, a leading publisher of learning materials for kindergarten through sixth grade, introduces Read & Understand Poetry for grades 2-6, a new resource that helps teachers guide students in reading and responding to poetry.

"Many teachers love reading poetry with their students, but find that they need a resource to help their students respond to it using their creative and critical thinking skills," said Bill Evans, CEO of Evan-Moor. "Read and Understand Poetry is designed as a resource that teachers can use to help students enjoy and deepen their knowledge of poetry forms and techniques."

In Read and Understand Poetry, easy-to-follow lessons guide teachers in introducing and reading poems chosen especially for students at their grade level. Available for grades 2–6, each title in the Read and Understand Poetry series contains approximately 27 engaging poetry selections ranging from rhyming verse and haiku to free verse, limerick and ballad.

Each poetry selection in Read and Understand Poetry is accompanied by a Teacher Page, which provides important background information that helps introduce students to language arts skills that are unique to poetry. Additionally, the Teacher Page contains guidelines for developing key poetry concepts and vocabulary, such as similes and metaphors, personification, alliteration, accent/stress, assonance, consonance and onomatopoeia.

Following each poetry selection are two Activity Pages that help students consolidate what they have learned. The first page presents questions covering literal comprehension, sequence, word meanings, context clues and inferences, and main idea and details. The standardized test format of the questions provides students with important test preparation practice. The second page encourages critical thinking and creativity with activities that invite students to share their opinions as they respond to open-ended questions, try their hand at poetic techniques such as onomatopoeia or alliteration, or write a poem of their own.

Additional student resources contained in Read and Understand Poetry include a seven-page Glossary of Poetry Terms, which features kid-friendly definitions and pronunciation guidelines for the new terms students will encounter, such as alliteration and simile. An About the Poets section presents brief information on each of the poets included in the anthology, featuring well-known classic and contemporary poets such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Robert Frost, Walt Whitman, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Pat Mora and William Shakespeare.

Teachers can reproduce all of the materials contained in Read and Understand Poetry to create a unique poetry anthology for each student.

The Read and Understand Poetry series contains four titles available for grades 2–3, grades 3–4, grades 4–5 and grades 5–6. Each title retails for $16.99.

# # #

For more information contact:
Megan Murray
Marketing Communications Coordinator
Phone: 831-649-5901 ext. 116
Email: meganm@evan-moor.com