Mural On Second Avenue

Moore, Lilian, and Roma Karas. Mural on 
Second Avenue, and other city poems. 
Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press, 2005. 


By Lilian Moore

Illustrated by Roma Karas

Copyright:  2005

Publisher:  Candlewick Press

Reading Level:

• Grade level:  3

Genre:  Poetry

Description:  Culture and Diversity, Geography

Suggested Delivery:  Read-aloud to whole class

Summary:  The poet, Lillian Moore, writes poems about city life and the great outdoors through a child's perspective.  The vibrant illustrations throughout this book help to bring each poem to life.

Electronic Resources:

• Teacher's Guide to Poetry:  this website provides dozens of links to different lesson activities on how to teach poetry to children based on themes and structures.
• The Children's Poetry Archive:  includes poems of all different genres and poetic forms for children to explore, as well as a Q & A section for the poets explaining where their ideas come from and why they enjoy writing poetry.

Key Vocabulary: growls, punctuates, plunging, phantom, forsythia, laundered, spews, seldom

Teaching suggestions:

• Use this book to introduce poetry.
• Demonstrate important fluency components when reading this book, such as prosody and rate that are essential to conveying the poems' meanings.

Comprehension Strategies:

• Before Reading:  
• Begin with a discussion on poetry and why people might choose to write poems rather than whole stories.  Get the students thinking about how poems are written and the idea of expressing feelings through this unique type of writing.

• During Reading:
• Discuss how the vivid illustrations bring each poem to life.
• Discuss how the structure of the poems play a very significant role to the poem's meaning.  For example, some poems contain lines with only one word on it.  Explain why the poet might have chosen to write it this way.

• After Reading:  
• Discuss the structures that the poems had; for example, some had rhyme schemes while others did not.  Ask the students if they think that rhyming is more affective in a poem, or if poems without this aspect are just as interesting to read.
• Have the students choose a specific poem to analyze the meaning of.  Instruct them to write a summary (a few sentences) describing what the poem is saying in their own words.

Writing Activity:

Students will create their own poems that describe their town or surroundings, similar to the theme of the book.  These poems must be a minimum of seven lines and can follow any pattern or structure they choose.  Students will include a drawing to represent their poems and will share their finished pieces with the rest of the class.