Teaching poetry

I know teachers who, when knowing a poetry unit is coming up, begin to hate it before it even starts. One of things we have introduced in the last couple of years is having the students write and analyse their own poem as part of a portfolio. Initially, this caused even more dread. I have found that one of things an enthusiastic teacher of poetry can achieve, is encourage students to explore their ideas and even feelings in new ways. I know of one student who received his first pass, a B, in many years through this task. Through poetry he was able to express aspects of his life that others had never heard of.

 Of course not every student is going to open themselves up in this way. That is okay. Poetry also challenges students in other ways. It gets them thinking analytically. Poetry is a puzzle that can be solved, you just need to find the pieces. Poetry can expose students to new ideas, times in history, lives other than their own. The same can be said about novels - which I love teaching as well - but poetry can do this in a concise lesson. Given that we are open to a variety of interpretations, it also gives students an opportunity to take risks in their creation of meaning.

 Part of every lesson is some kind of warm-up activity that recalls prior learning and/or gets the students. Below is the complete activity I use to get them started writing in a poetic form. It also works nicely to get them thinking about word choice and sentence structure. Having year 9 and 10 students clap out syllables is great fun and this warm up is probably my favourite out any other I do. Have a go.