Poetry Break: "Cricket Jackets" by Aileen Fisher

Introduction
Time, energy, and desire permitting, purchase crickets from a pet store or bait shop in advance. Make a number of terrariums by adding potato halves, potting soil, pebbles or gravel, and greenery to jars, then covering the tops with cheesecloth. (Feed crickets bits of fruit, vegetables, and dry rabbit food; give them a small container--like the lid from a smaller jar or a medicine bottle--filled with water.)

Make a display with the terrariums and books about crickets and bugs (see Extension below) that students can look at after the poetry reading.

Invite students to share what they already know about crickets.

*If you like to ham it up, you might pause, mentioning that you're a little cold. Take your sweater (a too-small one that you plant on the back of your chair as a prop beforehand) and try to put it on. Struggle dramatically, then finally give up, shrug, and say, "I guess this one doesn't fit anymore."

After you get back into reading position, ask, "Did you know that crickets wear jackets?" Then share the poem


Cricket Jackets
by Aileen Fisher

The day a cricket's jacket
gets pinchy, he can crack it
and hang it on a bracket
as he goes hopping by.

He doesn't need a mother
to go and buy another,
he doesn't need a mother,
and I will tell you why:

Beneath the pinchy jacket
the cricket sheds with vigor
he has a new one growing
that's just a little bigger,
to last him till July.

And then, again, he'll crack it,
his pinchy cricket jacket,
and hang it on a bracket
as he goes hopping by.

[from A Jar of Tiny Stars: Poems by NCTE Award-Winning Poets (Boyds Mill Press, 1996)]

Extension
Allow students time to observe the crickets in jars and browse the books on display, choosing one to check out if desired.

There are MANY books about crickets, but here is a small sampling of possible books to include:

Carle, Eric. 1990. A Very Quiet Cricket. Illustrated by the author. New York: Philomel Books.
Caudill, Rebecca. 1964. A Pocketful of Cricket. New York: Henry Holt and Company.
Fisher, Aileen. 1963. A Cricket in the Thicket. New York: Scribner.
Simon, Seymour. 1973. Discovering What Crickets Do. New York: McGraw Hill Book Co.