Teaching%20Poetry

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Teaching Poetry

• By Drew Lawson

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Introducing Poetry

• Have students bring the lyrics of their favorite
  (appropriate) songs to class, read them and
  discuss the poetic value of each song. Is a song
  poetry? What is poetry anyway?
• Introduce a few simple poetry terms in a
  mini-lesson and have the students immediately
  begin composing their own poetry.

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Introducing Poetry

• Have students choose three of their favorite
  words. Then have the students write a short poem
  using their favorite words.

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Student Examples

• Using the word unicorn
• Unicorn
• How strange a name.
• One would think it more proper
• To Say Uni-Horn.
• Why isnt this so?
• I dont know.
• Ill tell you when I see one (Barton 3).

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Student Example

• Using the word arteries
• The coffees getting cold.
• A city travels out from my window,
• Stalls on concrete arteries,
• Hardens under the highway sun (Barton 4).

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Teaching Poetry

• Begin by sharing examples of poetry to which
  students can easily relate. Then paraphrase the
  poems, either line by line or stanza by stanza,
  as a class.
• Begin with a song that prepares the student for
  the ensuing poem and deal with literary
  techniques in the song first.

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Teaching Poetry

• Have students discuss poetry in speculative group
  activities focusing on students personal
  responses to a particular poem.
• Group discussions should culminate in class
  presentations.
• Students should then write individual essays on
  the same poetry discussed in group activities.

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Teaching Poetry

• Use literary criticism to show students how poems
  can be viewed in vastly differing ways.
  Encourage students to respond to and speculate
  about the meaning of a poem.
• Read a poem aloud several times as a class so
  students can feel the rhythm of the poem.
• Use examples from original student poetry to
  introduce new poetry terms.

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Teaching Poetry

• Read a series of words to students, having them
  compose a poem using each word as soon as
  possible after they hear it.
• Use works of art and discuss how poems and visual
  images echo one another.
• Using poetry portfolios focusing on reader
  response, assess student achievement.

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Encouraging Written Response to Poetry

• Have students write journal entries using the
  categories Literary Critic, Personal Response,
  and Comparative Critic.
• Have students write a Poetry Opinion Paper
  agreeing or disagreeing with a certain aspect of
  a poem.
• Have students write in-class essays analyzing the
  poetic techniques in a poem that they have never
  seen before

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Encouraging Original Student Poetry

• Have students write an original poem that mimics
  a famous poem such as Hope is the thing with
  feathers by Emily Dickinson.
• Have students keep an observation notebook where
  they write descriptions of people, sounds,
  animals, nature scenes, dreams, etc. and then
  have students write poems based on these
  observations.
• Have students create a pastiche poem blending the
  works of great poets and Mother Goose rhymes.

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An Example of a Pastiche Poem

• The Spider
• Once upon a turret dreary sat I feeling wan and
  weary
• Over a boring bowl of curds and whey.
• While I gobbled, nearly slurping, suddenly there
  came a burping
• From the creature who haunted me night and day
• Tis the spider belching by the door, I
  muttered, only this and nothing more. (Polette
  3)

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Encouraging Original Student Poetry

• When studying Imagist poetry, have students write
  an Imagist poem describing an exact image. Then
  have students pass up their poems. Pass the
  poems back to the students making sure that no
  student gets his or her poem. The students must
  then draw the image.

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Encouraging Original Student Poetry

• Encourage students to freewrite by using
  different pictures, phrases, and music. Then
  have students re-read their freewriting,
  bracketing favorite images. Students will then
  take a group of related images and make each
  image a line of their poem.

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The End