Hayley Tuinstra

1. Poetry in the Classroom Why and How to do it… Hayley Tuinstra

2. “When poem and reader connect, poetry has the power to elicit rich sensory images and deep emotional responses. These emotional responses are often age-related, so educators must ensure that the topics in the poetry they use related to the experiences, emotions, concerns, and feelings of the readers.” • The above statement is why researching educational practices and literature is important in determining how to teach future students. This presentation is an example of reasons why and how to use poetry in the classroom.

3. Types of Poetry • “The challenge for teachers and library media specialists is to pique the interest and curiosity of all students and help them learn to appreciate a variety of poetic styles.” • Poetry Preferences of Young Adults: • Adolescents enjoy narrative poetry, like humorous poems, including limericks. Older teens prefer subtle humor. • Rhythm and rhyme are less important to older teens. • Younger teens find that figurative language interferes with their ability to understand poems. • Younger adolescents prefer modern poetry. • Haikus are the least popular among young adults.

4. Types of Poetry Continued • There is quite the selection of poetry types ranging from ballads to sonnets, haikus and fables, with a never-ending supply of examples of each. • The book Young Adult Literature mentions the website: http://www.shadowpoetry.com/resources/wip/types.html. This link can provide students with not only the definition of each kind of poetry but works of literature that they can refer to. • In order to provide students with the opportunity to truly embrace poetry it could be helpful to refer to this website to learn what style of poetry they like best. • This site is also useful in providing information of famous poets as well as tips in how to introduce poetry into the classroom.

5. “Painlessly Bringing Poetry into Your Classroom”Article by: K.J. Wagner • Reasons for using poetry in the classroom: • “Poetry helps students do well on high stakes tests because it gives their minds an exhilarating workout. Poetry inspires students to read more, imagine more, think more, discuss more and write more.” • Dr. Stanley believes poetry “massages the heart, cares for the soul, and preps students on life’s tougher questions that are seldom asked on high stakes test.” • Dr. Stanley’s book Creating Readers with Poetry establishes the argument that poetry helps children become better readers. “It’s the real stuff of reading that makes literacy come alive, especially with struggling readers.” • The book discusses the “fab five” of reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

6. Tips and Other Resources: • Keep a “Pot o’ Poetry” – an empty plant pot – containing short “giggle” poems. Include poems which will appeal to your students. • Post some poems you particularly like around the room. Allow the students to notice them on their own. • Have magnetic poetry kits available for students who finish their assigned work early. • Have students create “bio-poems” as a way to introduce themselves at the beginning of the year. • Gather some poems for “two voices”. Periodically allow two volunteers to perform a poem of their choosing. • Project an interesting (or mysterious) picture onto a screen with the overhead. As a class, create a short poem to accompany it. • Together as a class, create acrostic poems using content vocabulary. • http://www.poetryteachers.com/ • http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/haiku/compose_haiku.html • http://www.educationoasis.com/curriculum/LP/LA/poetry_guthrie.htm

7. Using Poetry to Teach Reading • Introduce a new poem by reading it to the class. You may want to pick poems that go with the subject matter you are studying. • Pass out the poem and have the children follow along as you reread it to them. • Read the poem chorally with you as the leader to keep the class together. • If there is new vocabulary in the poem that is crucial to comprehension, discuss it the first day the poem is introduced. • As poems become “old” poems, use them to work on word skills. These can be done orally, or as pencil and paper activities. • Allow children to read individual character parts during the choral reading. • Read “old” poems as mini-Reader Theater scripts. This should be done after the children are very familiar to the poem. A child is assigned to each of the character/narrator parts or to a particular stanza of the poem. The group of children presents the poem at the front of the classroom. • If you have too many poems to read them all at once, have the children take turns picking an old favorite to read.

8. Characteristics of Poetry for Young Adults • When selecting poems for young adults, ask the following questions: • Does the poem have meaning for the young adults – can they relate to the topic, setting, theme, and emotion being conveyed? • Does the poem elicit rich sensory images or deep emotional responses that young adults will appreciate or understand? • Does the poem allow adolescents to experience the power of words and to explore how words can elicit certain emotional responses? • Does the poem have vivid imagery and vibrant language? • Will the poem provide pleasure (i.e., can young adults relate to the poetry in some way either as an event or emotion they have experienced or would like to experience)?

9. Suggestions for Selecting Poetry • “Poetry is about recognizing and paying attention to our inner lives – our memories, hopes, doubts, questions, fears, [and] joys.” • “The key is to determine “what works” for an individual teacher and what young adults seem to enjoy.” • Resources for teachers: • Teaching Poetry in High School (Somers, 1999) • Young Adult Poetry: A Survey and Theme Guide (Schwedt and DeLong, 2002)

10. Suggestions for Using Poetry • Strategies in using poetry in instruction: • Share poems with young adults, but remember the way you share them can be important. • Use questions from various critical viewpoints to explore a novel in poetry form. • Teach adolescents to read poetry out loud by reading slowly in a normal tone of voice and pausing at the punctuation, rather than at the end of the line. • Define poetry for the students. • Immerse students in poetry. • Link poems to a classic novel. • Engage in authentic poetry discussions. • Save words from a poem. • Write and have the students write single line poems. • Create poems with the students.

11. Create a moment for students to learn by having them define poetry. • Poetry is “writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through its meaning, sound, and rhythm.” • “Literary work in which special intensity is given to the expression of feelings and ideas by the use of distinctive style and rhythm; poems collectively or as a genre of literature.” • “A quality of beauty and intensity of emotion regarded as characteristic of poems.” • “Something regarded as comparable to poetry in its beauty.”

12. Linking Poetry to Novels • Although a previously described suggestion is to link poems to “classic” novels, this can also be done in a more contemporary way to appeal to young adults by using more modern literature. • The author Sherman Alexie who wrote novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is also a writer of poetry geared towards young adults. • Two of Alexie’s poems reside within the compilation of poetry: Poetry Speaks: Who I Am, which combines classic, traditional literature with poems that are slightly newer and created for a younger audience. • The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian as well as the poem Indian Education, were each written with controversial issues in mind; issues which students will be facing on a day-to-day basis, establishing an opportunity for them to learn more than just text and punctuation.

13. Poetry 180 • “Poetry 180 is designed to make it easy for students to hear or read a poem on each of the 180 days of the school year.” • “Listening to poetry can encourage students and other learners to become members of the circle of readers for whom poetry is a vital source of pleasure.” • This website also has a link to the poetry section within The Library of Congress providing students with numerous resources of poetry related news and literature.

14. Example Poem from Poetry 180 Introduction to Poetry by Billy CollinsI ask them to take a poemand hold it up to the lightlike a color slideor press an ear against its hive.I say drop a mouse into a poemand watch him probe his way out,or walk inside the poem’s roomand feel the walls for a light switch.I want them to waterskiacross the surface of a poemwaving at the author’s name on the shore.But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with ropeand torture a confession out of it.They begin beating it with a hoseto find out what it really means.

15. Portrait Poems:Stepping into the World of OthersArticle By: Linda Christensen • “Portrait poems allow students to step into the world of others, to try on the persona of people from different time periods, cultures, genders, races. Through this kind of writing students struggle to see and understand another person’s point of view.” • Using a photo to inspire poetry “forces them to become concrete by describing details from the pictures, clothing their “ghosts.” • Photo prompts can be found in many places: • Students can be shown photographs of artwork from a particular period such as renaissance or enslavement times. • Field trips could be planned to local art museums where students can write poems about the artwork on display.

16. A Teacher’s Perspective on Poetry • Brian Holcomb is a professor at Michigan State University who taught a course called Foundations of Literary Study. • He described the course as “designed to be an introduction to all of the “big three” genres: poetry, fiction, and drama, however would have used poetry even if was not required.” • Professor Holcomb used a technique called “close reading” which focuses on the small details of a piece of literature in order to understand a larger meaning. He believed that “this technique works particularly well with poetry, partly because there is so much less language in a poem, and therefore it demands closer attention to detail.” • To him, poetry and its analysis is a valuable tool to begin learning about literary interpretation. • Holcomb’s selection of poetry, he admits is mostly random, however, after trying out various works has found ones which simply “work”.

17. Close Readings and Poetry • A tool known as Close Readings was introduced to me in a Michigan State University course and it is one that I plan to use when I am an educator one day. • This technique allows for a student to analyze small details of a poem in order to better understand its overall message. • The first stanza from Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold as an example: • The sea is calm tonight,The tide is full, the moon lies fairUpon the straits; - on, the French coast the lightGleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay,Come to the window, sweet is the night air! • The word use seems mostly positive here with words such as calm, full, gleams, glimmering, vast, tranquil, and sweet. • With the phrase “Gleams and is gone”, it seems as though the speaker could feel sadness in losing the light, could be metaphor for the loss of something bigger in life. • “Come to the window”, showing that the speaker has someone they want to share this beauty with.

18. Poetry I’d Like To Use In The Classroom • The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost • Lullaby by W.H Auden • I died for Beautyby Emily Dickinson • Still I Rise by Maya Angelou • Sonnet 130 by William Shakespeare • Dreams by Langston Hughes • When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be by John Keats • Annabel Leeby Edgar Allan Poe • The Summer of Black Widows by Sherman Alexie • Permanently by Kenneth Koch • The Wind by Sara Teasdale • Acquainted with the Night by Robert Frost • The Delight Song of Tsoai-Taleeby N. Scott Momaday • Haiku by Sonia Sanchez • No Images by WaringCuney

19. Final Thoughts • Each of the poems mentioned on the previous slide were ones which I felt not only showed traditional values of poetry but also ones which were more modern. I also attempted to provide poetry which can inspire words of beauty and strength that can bring not only knowledge but self-worth to students. • Poetry is something which encourages emotion and connection and is something I also believe is important to reside within a classroom. • “Poetry has the power not only to delight but also has the potential to instruct.”

20. Citations • http://teachersmentor.com/readingk3/using_poetry.html • http://www.educationoasis.com/resources/Articles/bringing_poetry.htm • http://www.shadowpoetry.com/resources/wip/types.html • http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/ • http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/001.html • Bucher, Katherine and Hinton, Kaavonia. Young Adult Literature: Exploration, Evaluation, and Appreciation. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2010. • Christensen. “Portrait Poems: Stepping into the World of Others.” Lessons for the Classroom: Social Studies and Language Arts: 228-230