Introduction

Jack Prelutsky was born in 1940 in Brooklyn, New York and grew up attending local public schools in the Bronx. His career began as a folk singer, and to this day he continues to entwine music with his poetry. Jack published his rst book, A Gopher in the Garden, in 1967 and has since published over seventy books of poetry. In 2006, he was honored as the inaugural winner of the Children’s Poet Laureate award from the Poetry Foundation. This unit of study is an introduction to Social-Emotional learning (SEl). This lesson explores the degrees of emotional intensity and the emotional impact of words through poetry, setting a poem to music, discussing how feelings change, and exploring the nuances of the written word. Presented in multi-sensory applications, this lesson will engage auditory, visual, and kinesthetic learners through music, art, cooking and taste.