by Laura Robb
Poetry! Many teachers avoid including poetry in a reading curriculum. Some teachers don’t use poetry because it’s unfamiliar and wasn’t part of their reading background. Others claim they don’t have time to expose students to poetry. However, I believe poetry is a powerful and important genre that should be integrated into the curriculum in all subjects throughout the school year.
Why poetry? Poems tickle the imagination and cause laughter! They tell stories like “Casey at the Bat” a narrative poem by Ernest Thayer, and “Lord Randall,” a medieval ballad. Poems capture feelings, a moment in time, and the variety is boundless: short lyrics, conversation poems, Japanese haiku, list poems, sonnets, small poems, and villanelles. They all have rhythm. Some poems rhyme; free verse poems don’t rhyme. Contemporary authors write novels in free verse. Check out Crossover by Kwame Alexander (HMH Books for Children 2014), Witness by Karen Hesse (Scholastic 2003), and Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson (Puffin Books 2016).
What’s magical about poems is they beg to be heard! Read poems to students and invite them to read poems to each other. The photographer uses a camera and film to capture a moment or tell a story. The poet uses words and figurative language to help readers “see” through the poet’s eyes, mind, and heart!
Be a Risk-Taker
You don’t have to know a lot about poetry to bring this genre to your students. Explore together. Start by checking out dozens of poetry books from your school library. Spread the books out around the classroom and invite students to choose two they want to read. Then, set aside two to three classes for students to read and reread poems and choose a few to read aloud to a partner. Powerful poetic language and imagery can become part of children’s memories when you try some of the ten ways to bring poetry into students’ lives.
- Start the day in self-contained classes by reading a poem. Offer one for dessert after lunch, and close the day by reading a class favorite.
- Open and close middle and high school classes by reading a poem.
- Ask your school librarian to find collections of poems relating to a subject: sports, science, history, math, music, art. Have partners read their poems to each other and discuss what they’ve learned about a specific subject.
- Invite students to read a favorite poem to their group or the entire class.
- Start a “poetry talk” project for an entire semester. Have students choose a poem to memorize, say it to you and reply back by sharing a poem you memorized.
- Have students choose a favorite poem, illustrate it, and create a display in your classroom and/or the school library.
- Share poems for two voices by Paul Fleishman with students and ask partners to select one they’d like to perform. After practicing, have pairs perform for the class.
- Invite students to silently “do” or act out poems they select or you choose. A great resource is Let’s Do A Poem edited by Nancy Larrick (Delacorte 1991).
- Choral read poems students and/or you select. Divide students into two to three groups that read a section of a poem together.
- Read poems to generate ideas for students’ writers’ notebooks.
Reading Poetry Matters
Poetry tunes students’ ears to figurative language and imagery, all the time showing them how much words matter! For striving readers, it offers an open door into the reading life. Surrounded by lots of white space, the poet’s words invite instead of intimidate. Moreover, reading poetry builds students’ experiences with literary language, enlarges their background knowledge and vocabulary, and develops the self-confidence needed to tackle longer poetic and prose texts.
By reading, rereading, and listening to poems, students absorb and memorize the poet’s words and images, and the poems become part of their memory forever! Every time I see the sunrise I find myself whispering the first two stanzas of this poem by Emily Dickinson:
I’ll tell you how the sun rose,
A ribbon at a time.
The steeples swam in amethyst,
The news like squirrels ran.
The hills untied their bonnets,
The bobolinks begun.
Then I said softly to myself,
That must have been the sun!
I want students to know, love, and be acquainted with so many poems that the words will be imprinted in their memory, ready to surface when an experience calls the poem to the forefront of their minds. When poems become part of students’ DNA, critical thinking develops as they associate a poem’s meaning with a personal experience. I recall Joshua scratching his head in class and shouting, “Fleas./Adam had ‘em,” and students’ reserved giggles transforming into ripples of laughter! Yes! Words embedded in memory link our experiences to the poet’s and our lives are richer for it!
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Learn more about Laura’s ideas on reading- check out- Teaching Reading in Middle School
