Explore Poetry

by Donald H. Graves

The reading and writing processes have historically been kept apart, but with this series you can explore their richness for yourself and your students in ways that unite the processes meaningfully and productively. Explore Poetry
This volume involves you in both the reading and writing of poetry, for yourself and your children. Experiment with reading poetry aloud, "found" poems, writing poetry from prose, and acquiring poems through choral speaking. The "Actions" here help you encourage a sense of play in the composing of poetry, focusing on passion and wonder, combining sound and sense, and transforming the common into the unusual. A concluding section invites ways of spreading poetry throughout the curriculum, integrating it with the study of science, history, and mathematics. To learn more about Donald Graves, visit .

212 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Donald Graves was one of the greatest voices of his generation, a plain spoken, thoughtful genius. He was an educator, a writer, an outspoken advocate for educational best practices. His death was a loss too great to put into words for people the world over, whether they were aware of it or not. A Professor Emeritus at the University of New Hampshire, Donald Graves, with the help of mentor Donald Murray and contemporaries like Lucy Calkins and Ralph Fletcher, revolutionized writing instruction in the U.S. with the widespread practice of practical workshop-based language arts instruction. In his decades at the forefront of writing instruction research, Donald offered numerous works that continue to shape the face of instruction today and for the foreseeable future.