Use a picture book and graphic organizer. Choose a picture book that has one central speaker, like "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie," and create a graphic organizer that has a column for characters and another for speaker clues. Read the book aloud to your students and ask them to give you clues that help to identify the speaker. On the board or projector, fill out the organizer with two student responses. Have the students complete the rest of the graphic organizer on their own.
Model the steps to identifying a speaker in a poem. Modeling is extremely important in teaching any age group, but it is especially vital for elementary students. Elementary students are regularly presented with new material and are trying to grasp new skills and information at the same time. When first presenting poetry to young children, read a poem aloud using a popular children's song or lullaby like, "There Was an Old Lady," or "Hush Little Baby." When reading a line like, "hush little baby, don't say a word, Papa's gonna buy you a mockingbird," ask students to identify who is speaking to whom and have them fill out the same graphic organizer that you used with the picture book. Having prior knowledge and a frame of reference from the picture book example will make it easier for students to complete the graphic organizer.
Highlight and underline the poem. After you have completed the previous steps, choose a slightly more challenging poem or a poem that the students are not familiar with, like "My Shadow" by Robert Louis Stevenson. Give everyone a copy of the poem. Highlight and underline the textual clues in the poem that you find when reading the first stanza. The first line of "My Shadow" states, "I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me." Ask students to identify the difference between the speaker -- I, me -- and the character -- shadow -- and record them on the same graphic organizer. Allow students to complete the remaining stanzas alone or with a partner. Once students have gone through this process, they will be able to identify a speaker in a piece of poetry successfully. Gradually release students to work independently and without the graphic organizer.