Walnut Ridge holds Poetry Out Loud program

VERNON — “Good Morning, Walnut Ridge,” announced precious voices over the public address system in the school office, “Please stand to salute the flag. Ready, salute.”
It was Walnut Ridge Primary School's morning opening ceremonies, April 24, and kick-off for their week long “Poetry Out Loud” celebration.
The Kindergartners led the school in the “Pledge of Allegiance, sang “You're a Grand Old Flag” with gusto, including marching band, trumpets, piccolos, clarinets, and drums, and concluded with saying, “Make it a great day, Walnut Ridge.”
Next, each student took turns ringing the loud black metal school bell with a “clang.”
On Monday, first-grade poetry readers recited poems about “Spring Sounds,” how they wished they were “a fish,” and Autumn recited her very own poem called “Spring.”
Principal Rosemary Gebhardt explained, each morning throughout the week, the students recited their own poems — and others' poetry - over the loud speaker to celebrate Poetry Out Loud. She added, “This is how you start.”
In middle school and high school, she continued, each English classroom competes by reciting poems, evaluated on a Poetry Out Loud guidelines rubric, until a winner is determined who continues to the state competition.
Poetry Out Loud is a national program which fosters memorizing and reciting great poetry, along with public speaking skills.
For the high school level, she said, it includes delivery and theatrics, where the students really get in character.
In Walnut Ridge, Gebhardt said, students work with poetry almost every day, creating their own poetry notebook. Their poems include: acrostic, math, social studies, and science — rhyming or not. Thus, when the students reach the poetry unit in the Reading and Writing Workshop, they already know the elements of poetry, and how it differs from fiction and nonfiction.
Gebhardt said Poetry Out Loud is something Walnut Ridge does in April, because April is Poetry Month. Also, by April, the students are ready to start reciting poetry. She explained, reading out loud is very difficult, because it includes both fluency and coding.
Walnut Ridge Primary School made it a great poetry week.