Yesterday in my son's folder, I found a twelve line poem she has asked me to help him memorize in only a week.
Is she expecting more of him because he's good at memorizing? There's a bit of me wondering if he's to be giving this poem as the rest of the class acts it out, to be honest.
What do you think? Beyond a Kindergarten level? (This is a Christian school, so the content is Christian).
What the Tulips Say by Phyllis C. Michael
I wonder what the tulips say
To each other as they raise their heads.
Up from the dark-brown earth they come,
God calls them from their beds.
I walked quite close to them today
And thought I heard them sing,
"Praise God from whom all blessings flow;
Praise God, our Lord and King."
The red one spoke and the yellow ones nodded
Just as if they had done it before;
"Praise God! We live, we live, WE LIVE.
We live forevermore."
make it into a song, you'll be surprised how much they can recall:)
Or break it into couplets and associate an action/hand-motion to accompany each one. Choreography can sometimes help kids who are kinesthetically inclined or visual-spatial as learners.
MAYBE beyond kindy level, but just for recitation? Assuming reinforcement in class, I'm thinking that for a group recitation this is probably fine.
But I don't really know, since we homeschooled kindy.
I thought about making it a song, but am not so musical.
We've learned two lines already. I showed him a time-lapse video on YT of tulips "raising their heads" and have used a hand motion to help him with that.
Also, the second line begins with "To" and I related that to tu-lips. He loves the idea of lips on a flower.
Funny, he memorized the fifth line yesterday out of context. Perhaps I just should give him a copy and let him read it before bedtime? I don't know...I've never been in this position.
HK-I think you may be right about the reinforement of the whole class.
I hope so, anyway. DS would have stage-fright, I know, if required to do a solo.
Seems fine to me but our measure is off. My kindergarten son received a packet of song lyrics on American History to memorize and was tested weekly on a solo performance. He didn't pass each week for sure. The songs covered Rosa Parks, a Roosevelt or three, Georgia O'Keeffe, the Wright brothers, Henry Ford, various jazz musicians, and other American heroes.
When my son first started kindy- most had only just turned four- his class sang Christmas carols. They memorised eight songs! I couldn't believe it. But, as Huckleberry wrote, when they put it in song they can remember everything.
My kids attended a French immersion school in elementary, and French folks are very big on memorizing and reciting poems. They start at a young age - K or 1st grade. My kids never liked memorizing poems and typically spent more time whining about the poem than the time needed to memorize it. Perhaps it is beyond K level but I'm sure it won't be any big deal for him to memorize.
Memorizing all this stuff really seems like a thing of the past, especially since the invention of writing.
My son in Kindergarten and his classmates recently had memorized parts for a play at school. Each part was about 1/3 of what your son was given.
However...
When I was Kindy my mom offered me and my sister $5 to memorize some scriptures. Big money to us. I had the beattitudes which is much longer than the poem above. I had it memorized perfectly in King James English in less than an hour. My sister who was older and had to memorize a chapter thought it extremely unfair.
In one of the churches we attended in the 3yr old Bible class the children learned the 27 books of the New Testament and could recite them in order. Quite neat to watch how quickly they learned with only a bit of reinforcement each week.
SO while most schools don't ask quite so much memorization/recitation, I have very often seen higher expectations with church and religious education. We committed a great deal of Scripture to memory when I was a child and I have been amazed that so much stayed with me permanently.
The learning is usually quite easy with rhythm and repetition. Make a game of it and I expect you will be amazed at how easily it comes. Good luck!
Memorizing all this stuff really seems like a thing of the past, especially since the invention of writing.
Perhaps but I still find it useful to know basic maths even though there have been calculators for some time now.
Memorizing all this stuff really seems like a thing of the past, especially since the invention of writing.
While that is true - after all, rhyming couplets were originally used as a mnemonic device for recalling oral histories, I have always had a pretty good memory so enjoyed memorizing stuff as a kid.
I also think that it helps wear to the mental grooves that will be vital to later learning - some facts do just have to be internalised.
DD memorized a sonnet's worth of lines of Shakespeare in drama class at 4 and. 5. But yes our judgement is off; she memorizes everything. Could you make a little book with different pictures? Even flash cards for lines? I'm thinking of how kids memorize books so easily. But I agree, hand and body motions help.
It's an old-fashioned thing to ask, but I wouldn't assume it was differentiation, though if my 5 or 6yo child was then to recite it solo in front of an audience I might! At DS's (old fashioned, non-selective except by being fee-paying) school they did the odd bit of memorisation at age 4/5/6/7. From 8, they have Poetry Recital, at which every child stands up in turn in front of an audience of 200 or so people and, unamplified, performs a poem of 20-30 lines. I was impressed the first time, and more so by the improvement the second time. They can all do it, many of them very well.
I wouldn't be doing any kind of artificial mnemonic, except maybe at the end if there are one or two mistakes remaining; I'd just assume that lots of repetition would get it learned. I'd learn it myself and recite it together while walking anywhere, for example.
He's memorized six lines as of today. We have them posted on the fridge.
I've been just asking him what his lines are and he recites what he knows and then we add another line. He's absorbing them quickly. Having him repeat the known lines each time is helping to reinforce them, and since we do this maybe four or five times a day during-breakfast, or in the car, or walking around, or bath time, etc.- he's not feeling pressured.
At any rate, I'm struggling to keep up more than he is struggling to remember. I'm trying not to "cheat" and use the sheet when he's reciting.
I would be very surprised by this expectation in a public K, given that you say they only have a week's time. In DD's public K, the K kids did a play, but they rehearsed for weeks, and no one had a speech that long. Couple of lines at time, here and there. They also sang songs all together, but if you flub the words doing that, it doesn't matter. But maybe they are all reciting this as one? Have you asked?
No idea what is asked in private schools, though.
I haven't asked the teacher if it's a group effort, but when I asked DS, he said he's the only one doing that poem because he's the "only one who can read fifth grade."
He did say three of the girls will be doing a poem on teeth, though.
He knows the entire poem, including the title and author now. He picked up the last stanza without my prompting.
Update:
Silly me, I realized the teacher wanted DS to only READ the passage at the graduation ceremony. She wasn't expecting a memorized rendition. I suppose this sort of misunderstanding is to be expected of a mother who is used to an advanced child, right?
The reading went like this:
DS came to the mic and teacher said he would read the passage. He lifted the sheet of paper and she turned around and told the audience, "Yes, he really can read!" and cued him on.
He read the poem (pausing at the correct points for his classmates' acting it out-which they somewhat followed through.) and did very well overall. He was the only one to give a solo.
This upcoming school year, he's going to a school that hosts a twice-yearly all school play. I'm wondering if he will enjoy it.
Ametrine- that's awesome! Glad it went well!
My ds (in k) was the "narrator" for the play. He memorized it just from the practice. My ds was sad to narrate, because he wasn't allowed to wear a costume.lol.
Ha! I had the feeling something was lost in translation here.
Ha! I had the feeling something was lost in translation here.
Ug. It's my fault. I just read into the assignment...
Let's all automatically make assignments more "interesting" by default.
Poor DS.