Great Read Alouds--Tales & Poetry

READING ALOUD: ITS IMPORTANCE FOR EMERGENT READERS!

 

Jim Trelease on the Importance of Reading Aloud: "You can't catch a cold from somebody who does not have a cold, if you don't have that love, "to read" you can't give it to your kid."

"The Masque of the Red Death"

"No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal--the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and the profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution" (171).

"The Fall of the House of Usher"

"I Know not how it was--but, with the first glimpse of the builiding, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurabe, because peotic, sentiment with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible" (91-92).

"Alone"

From Childhood's hour I have not been

As others were--I have not seen

As others saw--I could not bring

My passions from a common spring--

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow--I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone--

And all I lov'd--I lov'd alone--

Then--in my childhood--in the dawn

Of a most stormy life--was drawn

From ev'ry depth of good and ill

The mystery which binds me still--

From the torrent, or the fountain--

From the red cliff of the mountain--

From the sun that 'round me roll'd

In its autumn tint of gold--

From the lightning in the sky

As it pass'd me flying by--

From the thunder, and the storm--

And the cloud that took the form

(When the rest of Heaven was blue)

                    Of a demon in my view--

"Fog"

The fog comes

on little cat feet.

It sits looking 

over harbor and city 

on silent haunches

and then moves on.

 

"Summer Grass"

Summer grass aches and whispers.

It wants something; it calls and sings; it pours

out wishes to the overhead stars.

The rain hears; the rain answers; the rain is slow

coming; the rain wets the face of the grass.

"Landscape"

See the trees lean to the wind's way of learning.

See the dirt of the hills shape to the water's 

way of learning.

See the lift of it all go the way the biggest

wind and the strongest water want it.

 

 "When Lilacs Lasts In The Dooryard Bloom'D"

by Walt Whitman 

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd,

And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night,

I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,

Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west, 

And thought of him I love.

Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,

Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land,

With the pomp of the inloop'd flags with the cities draped in black,

With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veil'd women standing,

With possessions long and winding and the flambeaus of the night,

With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and the unbared heads,

With dirges through the night, with the thousands vocices rising strong and solemn,

With all the mournful voices of the dirges pour'd around the coffin, 

The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs--where amid these you journey, 

With the tolling tolling bells' perpetual clang,

Here, coffin that slowly passes,

I give you my sprig of lilac. 

"On the Beach At Night"

On the beach at night,

Stands a child with her father,

Watching the east, the autumn sky.

Up through the darkness,

While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,

Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky,

Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east,

Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter,

And night at hand, only a very little above,

Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades.

From the beach the child holding the hand of her father, 

Those burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all,

Wathcing, silently weeps.

Weep not, child,

Weep not, my darling,

With these kisses let me remove your tears,

The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious,

They shall nto long possess the sky, they devour the stars only in apparition, 

Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the Pleiades shall emerge,

They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall shine out again,

The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again, they endure,

The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons shall again shine.

Then dearest child mournest thou only for Jupiter?

Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars?

Something there is,

(With my lips soothing thee, adding I shisper, 

I give thee the first suggestions, the problem an indirection,)

Something there is moreimmortal even thatn the stars,

(Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,)

Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter, 

Longer than sun or any revolving satellite, 

Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades. 

Will there really be a morning?

Is there such a thing as day?

Could I see it from the mountains

If I were as tall as they?

Has it feet like water-lilies?

Has it feathers like a bird?

Is it brought from famous countries

Of which I have never heard?

Oh, some scholar! Oh some sailor!

Oh, some wise man from the skies!

Please to tell a little pilgrim

Where the place called morning lies!

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune without the words, 

And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,

And on the strangest sea;

Yet, never, in extremity,

It asked a crumb of me.

I'm nobody! Who are you?

Are you nobody too?

Then there's a pair of us--don't tell!

They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!

How public, like a frog

To tell your name the livelong day

To an admiring bog!

 

"Little Girl Speakings"

Ain't nobody better'n my Daddy,

you keep yo' quauter,

I anin't yo' daughter.

Ain't nobody better'n my Daddy.

Ain't nothing prettier'n my dollie,

heard what I said

don't pat her head,

Ain't noghting prettier'n my dollie.

No lady cookinger than my Mommy,

smell that pie,

see I don't lie,

No lady cokinger than my Mommy.

LIFE DOESN’T FRIGHTEN ME

BY MAYA ANGELOU

Reader’s Theatre 

Created by Lanajean Costello, ENMS

R1: Shadows on the wall
R3: Noises down the hall
R2, R4: Life doesn't frighten me at all

R5: Bad dogs barking loud
R2: Big ghosts in a cloud
R1, 3, 6: Life doesn't frighten me at all

R6: Mean old Mother Goose
R1: Lions on the loose
R1, 3: They don't frighten me at all

R3: Dragons breathing flame
R6: On my counterpane
R4: That doesn't frighten me at all.

R6: I go boo
R5: Make them shoo
R4: I make fun
R3: Way they run
R2: I won't cry
R1: So they fly
R2, 4, 6: I just smile
R1, 3, 5: They go wild

All: Life doesn't frighten me at all.

R5: Tough guys in a fight
R1, 2: All alone at night
All: Life doesn't frighten me at all.

R6: Panthers in the park
R3: Strangers in the dark
All: No, they don't frighten me at all.

R2, 4: That new classroom where
R1, 2, 4: Boys all pull my hair
R3, 5, 6: (Kissy little girls with their hair in curls)
All: They don't frighten me at all.

R5: Don't show me frogs and snakes
R1: And listen for my scream,
R4: If I'm afraid at all
R2: It's only in my dreams.

R6: I've got a magic charm
R2, 4, 6: That I keep up my sleeve
R3, 5: I can walk the ocean floor
R1: And never have to breathe.

All: Life doesn't frighten me at all
R1, 2: Not at all
R3, 4: Not at all.

All: Life doesn't frighten me at all.