YVCS is dedicated to literacy development, creative thinking and community involvement.  Children regularly engage in creative writing activities that include poetry because we believe poetry promotes literacy while also building community and fostering emotional development. Poetry crosses boundaries that little else can.

• Poetry helps us know each other.
• When read aloud, poetry is rhythm and music and sounds and beats. It’s the most kinesthetic of all literature; it’s physical and full-bodied, which activates the heart and soul and sometimes bypasses the traps of the mind.  Poetry moves us.
• Poetry opens venues for speaking and listening, valuable life skills.
• Poetry has space for English Language Learners. Because poems defy rules, poetry can be made accessible for all students, regardless of reading level or language skills. Poetry is universal.
• A well-crafted phrase or two in a poem can help us see an experience in an entirely new way. We can gain insight that had evaded us many times, that gives us new understanding and strength. William Butler Yeats said this about poetry: “It is blood, imagination, intellect running together…It bids us to touch and taste and hear and see the world, and shrink from all that is of the brain only.”

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/five-reasons-poetry-needed-schools-elena-aguilar