Naming the World: A Year of Poems and Lessons

As a Middle School English Language Arts teacher with many years of teaching experience, but only one of Middle School ELA, This book has made my teaching poetry with my English Language Arts students both extremely enjoyable and easy to do. Everything is laid out in an easy to use manner, and I don't have to search each day and each week for materials that I can use viz copyright permission. My students look forward each day to the poetry analysis that we do, and, in turn, have begun writing their own poetry. I can't thank Ms. Atwell, Heinemann, and the reviewers on Amazon who recommended this text enough. I would highly recommend it to others, as well as Nancie's 3rd edition of In the Middle, which has additional poetry lessons contained within, and provides additional insight to teaching ELA to middle schoolers. Thanks again.

Overall, this saves the upper-grade teacher a lot of precious time. The poems, in general, are very useful and the guides give the instructor a quick overview of what to discuss. However, I would hesitate to use several of these poems in my school district. Not all students would be emotionally mature enough to handle all of these poems so educators need to be careful about what they choose. This is not a big deal. The program delivers well on what it promises.

Loved the poems and lessons. When I bought this I understood it as for upper elementary and middle school. I felt some of the poems were over my fifth grade students' heads.

This has a great collection of student work, as well as well-known poets. The guiding suggestions and pairing of the poetry is very well done and I am able to use these pieces with my three grade levels that I teach.

Excellent resource of short poems and exercises with giant margins for lots of notes.

I find it very useful as a source for poems with which to start Writing Workshop and as a source for poems to study as part of a poetry unit.

I have used this book for a number of years but just shifted to a new school that didn't have a copy so I decided to but my own copy so I could continue to use this with my class

If you know Nancie Atwell, you know you can count on her to deliver strong writing guidance for any teacher-from novice to master.I know this firsthand since I was fortunate enough to intern under her in the fall of 2008 before she retired. That's when I picked up this resource (and had her sign the inside of it...sigh).Back then, I taught fifth grade. A few years later, I moved to seventh grade. Since then, I've taught fourth grade. I've used this rich resource every.single.year.I've read some reviews that caution about the content and maturity level of some of the poems. I agree, but isn't that why we, as educators, must use our professionalism to tailor the instruction to fit our students' needs?Are there some poems that I would not expose my students to? Sure. I consider them just like I do books: some are "not yet." They certainly aren't BAD, but just not-read-for-prime-time-elementary-years. And that's okay, because there are PLENTY of other rich poems inside from which to choose.Thanks to this book, my instruction of poetry has skyrocketed and my students routinely win awards for poetry every.single.year.That's why I will return to Old Glory year after year. I won't mind the dogeared pages because I know that my kids will be the winners in the end.HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Worth it for the poems alone. All teachers of poetry should read this.

I only got the book with no year or lessons...for $100 it is not worth it.