How can poetry influence the literacy development of beginning readers?
Beginning readers also benefit from the rhyming, predictable, and repetitious nature of poetry. Poems give cues that help children decode words they don’t yet know how to read. For example, poems have words with the same ending sounds and beginning sounds. Children can make letter-sound connections by matching the sounds of words they hear with the letters in the words on a page. Many children can memorize rhymes and remember words after hearing and seeing them once. When you are reading a poem, you are reading sort of short, direct, gorgeous statements. It engages children right away. It gets them excited about reading and writing. And, as they get excited, they want to do more and more and more.
