poetry

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Home : 2007 : January : 2

poetry
By BookMuncher

I teach poetry similar to MIteach... actually, that's probably because I also use a book by Georgia Heard, but it's called For the Good of the Earth and SUn. I'll have to look into the one MIteach mentioned... the one I use
is SO valuable. After reading it, I feel like I am teaching so much more than poetry when we do poetry in our room. In this philosophy you're really not teaching "types" of poems, as much as you are teaching a poem as a vehicle for communicating tiny, powerful, intimate, and important thoughts.

I explained what I do in detail and also posted lots of my lessons and books on this

thread:

http://www.proteacher.net/discussions/showthread.php?t=27910

As for a way to teach both reading and writing, I've found great success with having a poetry journal where kids both paste in favorite poems by famous poets AND write their own. For example: If, in one mini-lesson I was showing them how poets make their poems mean different things by breaking the lines in different places, I would have some good free-verse examples of that. They could choose one that speaks to them, paste it in, and then try it out for themselves.

Also, through out this school year, I've been doing something that I haven't tried before. In order to get them more immersed in poetry, I've been reading free-verse poems randomly. After I read it, we sometimes discuss it and sometimes don't. The poem is then available typed up and placed in a prominent pocket in our classroom. If the poem is special to you, you're allowed to take one and tape it in your desk, on your cubby, or on a folder OR take it home or put it in your reading bookshelf. I'm trying to teach them that if you want to write like a poet, you have to live like one. And real poets read other poetry and hang it in places they can see it. Now my kids have poems by Eloise Greenfield, Georgia Heard, Langston Hughes and others hanging from the insides of their desks. SOmetiems when we are in a transition, I'll see their lips moving as they re-read them. How can I fault them? They're budding poets!