Poetry for Home: Homelessness (Early Grades)

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Objectives

Activities will help students:

• Read and understand a poem
• Write a poem based on their feelings about their home
• Understand why some families are homeless
• Empathize with homeless children

Essential Questions

• What does “home” mean to you?
• How would it feel to have to move out of your home?
• What are some reasons families are homeless?
• How do people describe the insecurity around losing their homes?

Materials

• Handout: When I Think of Home (model poem) (PDF)
• A copy of Youme Landowne’s Sélavi: That Is Life: A Haitian Story of Hope. Find it in your library or order it at www.cincopuntos.com.

Reading and Language Arts/ELL

1. What do you think of when you think of your home? Make a list of words that come to mind when you think of your home. (Note: you may want to offer some examples about your own home first so that students can have a guide) You might use description words, such as “wood floors,” “pottery” or “green bedroom.”
2. Next make a list of feelings you have when you think of your home. Some examples might be words, such as “comfy,” “warm” or “safe.”
3. Generate a list of special people or items that you think of when you think of home. Some examples are “parents,” “grandparents,” “sister/brother” or “aunt/uncle.”
4. (Note: Distribute the handout of the poem, “When I Think of Home” by Catlin L. Crawford and read it aloud for the students. You may want to have pictures of some  of the vocabulary words used in the poem, such as “mulberry trees” and “honeysuckle.”) In pairs, take turns reading the poem to each other, and then discuss the questions: What do you like about this poem? What does it make you think of? Share your ideas with the class.
5. Now use Crawford’s poem to write about your own home. Fill in the parts of the poem that tell about your wonderful home by taking your list and putting the words that sound right into the blank spaces on the right side of your handout. For example, “When I think of ‘home’ I think of my teddy bear.”
6. Display your new poems on the wall or on a bulletin board in your class.

Extension Project (optional)

With the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, a relevant book is Youme Landowne’s Sélavi:That Is Life: A Haitian Story of Hope. After reading the story, answer these questions:

• What does “sélavi” mean?
• Why did the boy choose that as his name?
• What did each of the children do with what they brought back from their busy day?
• What did the people mean when they said, “Alone we may be a single drop of water, but together we can be a mighty river”?
• How does the story of children your own age who are homeless make you feel? What do you think you can do to help them?

APPLYING WHAT YOU’VE LEARNED 

Effective learners connect what they learn to their own lives. Think about what you have learned in this lesson. Discuss the following questions with a classmate or answer them in a journal.

• Are homeless people lazy and that’s why they lose their homes?
• Why do you think the general stereotype of homelessness is so negative?
• What are reasons people lose their homes? Are any of these reasons out of their control? Are any of these reasons unfair?
• When you think about your own home now, what thoughts do you have?

Standards

Activities and embedded assessments address the following standards (McREL 4th  edition)

Civics

Standard 3. Understands the sources, purposes, and functions of law, and the importance of the rule of law for the protection of individual rights and the common good.

Economics

Standard 5. Understands unemployment, income and income distribution in a market economy.

Historical Understanding

Standard 2. Understands the historical perspective.

Language Arts

Standard 5. Uses the general skills and strategies of the reading process.

Standard 6. Uses reading skills and strategies to understand and interpret a variety of literary texts.

United States History

Standard 31. Understands economic, social and cultural developments in the contemporary United States.