I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud

I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud

Poem by William Wordsworth
(The kids find the author's name to be a hoot ~ WORDSworth ~ his words must be worth a lot!

Imagery, personification, vocabulary...This is a such a great poem to use with kids!  The poem can be found at the Poetry Foundation website.

We began by reading a copy of the poem and using the Internet to view images of daffodils, vales, and bays.  We talked about the meaning of vocabulary words new to the kids: jocund, pensive, sprightly, and solitude.  Then, the kids worked hard to consider what the author wanted us to take away from this poem.

After reading the poem several times, I shared this awesome comic strip version of the poem that I found through a McGraw Hill site (scroll down to page three).  This helped my students understand the poem even better, especially the idea of personification.  Later, the kids drew their own examples of personification.

Printable Personification Page through Google Drive

Another great discovery was the picture book I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud illustrated by Sami Suomalainen, available as a PDF and located at Be There Bedtime Stories.  The kids were intrigued by the illustrator's interpretation of the poem, and it helped them understand it in a different and deeper way.  After all this work with the poem, we completed a Literature Web. Since it was our first attempt, we did it together, stanza by stanza.

Our next step is to complete a Vocabulary Web for some of the new words from the poem.  The kids will use Internet resources to complete their webs with a partner (call me tech savvy, or just know that we don't have dictionaries in our room...) 

Vocabulary Web

Try this great poem with your class!