Teaching Poetry

1. Teaching Poetry By Drew Lawson

2. 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.

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

4. Student Examples • Using the word “unicorn”: Unicorn How strange a name. One would think it more proper To Say Uni-Horn. Why isn’t this so? I don’t know. I’ll tell you when I see one (Barton 3).

5. Student Example • Using the word “arteries”: The coffee’s getting cold. A city travels out from my window, Stalls on concrete arteries, Hardens under the highway sun (Barton 4).

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. 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

11. 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.

12. 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)

13. 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.

14. 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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