Author Study: Shel Silverstein

In the next few posts I will be discussing my outcomes from the author study I completed in the second week of November. I chose this author because I also wanted to introduce children to poetry at the same time. The first day of the author study I introduced children to some facts about Shel Silverstein. Some of the facts I shared were that he was a songwriter, poet, illustrator, author, he loved drawing cartoons, and won a grammy for his musical of Where the Sidewalk Ends.

I then introduced perspective by read the poem "One Inch Tall" and asking some questions such as What if you were a small, tiny ant, how would your life be different? Would it be the same in any way? Think about height and weight. Would you have to eat less? Would you fear people stepping on you because you’re so small? After the poem, as a group, each child discusses what one of the advantages/disadvantages would be of being one inch tall. I got a lot of different responses such as "I would sneak downstairs in the middle of the night and no one would see me" and "I could be a friendly giant". Their answers proved they understood the main idea of the poem. They also found a lot of humor in his poetry, which I think help to hold their attention and gain this type of understanding.