Why should we encourage kids to read and write poetry? Poetry enables teachers to show children how to write, read, and understand any text. Poetry can give young writers a change to express emotion, experience rhythm, and even sing. Kids explore a host of reading skills. Beginning skills such blending, segmenting, syllabication, and rhyme are explored. But poetry also affords opportunities to dig into deeper concepts such as descriptive language, metaphor, simile, inferring, foreshadowing and understanding different perspectives as well. Reading poetry aloud in class can foster trust and empathy in the classroom community, while also emphasizing speaking and listening skills. Repeated readings of poetry allows young readers to practice reading with strong rate, enhanced expression, greater accuracy and increased prosody. The list goes on and on! Here are some fun, interactive websites to explore with your young poet today. Just click on the boxes below-