Stations of Poetry

Laura Randazzo wrote about a poetry activity she used in her classroom that broke down five different types of poetry and had the students go between stations and create their own poems. This is a great way to engage students in the classroom as well as have them experiment with different kinds of poetry.

The first station was blackout poetry. In short, blackout poetry is taking a page from a newspaper or book and blacking out the page except for the words you are using for the poem. This allows the students to read through the page and select words for their poem. Many forms of blackout poetry include artwork that the students make to cover the unselected words.

The second station was a new one to me, paint chip poetry. Briefly, students receive one of those paint sample cards and create a poem using three of the names typed on the card. This one challenges students to think and outline a concept for a poem before writing one out.

The third was termed reversal poetry, which is based around a worksheet that was given to the students. The students would then fill out the worksheet. This worksheet helps students to deconstruct the poem and analyze the structure and parts of the poem.

The fourth station is acrostic poetry. Acrostic poetry is built by getting a word, spelling it vertically, then writing a poem around that word. This gives the students the chance to narrow down the words they can use by limiting it to words that share letters in common.

The final station is centered around rolling dice, cleverly called roll of the dice. This sets the structure of the poem by rolling two dice, the numbers added together are the number of lines for the poem. The dice are then rerolled and this determines the number of letter for the first line and then rolled again for the second line and so forth. This challenges students in creating structure and the proper words to create a poem.

These kinds of poetry set up in stations like this is a great way to introduce students to poetry after going over the basics to help them understand poetry a bit more and help them understand it. This is a good way to engage the students in poetry writing and by sharing their writing they can find the value in it.


You can read Laura's Article here.

Helping Students Access the Inaccessible in a Poetry Unit

"Teaching Poetry to an Unpoetical Age-- A Junior High Unit" by Eric W. Johnson

Reading this article, I recognized that too many junior high (and high school) students don't recognize what poetry really is, much less how to go about approaching it. Students enter an English class with some firm pre-conceptions about the nature of poetry and their relationship to it. Although Johnson does not say in quite so many words, the only real way for his methods to work is through creating an open, respectful environment where questions of all sorts are welcomed and constructive criticism is taken well. As a teacher, it is crucial that we respect our students in their attempts to learn and that we encourage our students to do the same for their peers, as they read and come to understand the works of others, and as they write works of their own.

Of course, our students must both read and write poetry. And we shouldn't be afraid to challenge them; detailed and individual feedback on how they can improve their strengths will stretch them academically and lead them successfully to the knowledge we want them to find.

To lead them to this knowledge, they must be confident. Johnson suggests posting student work after they write it, and allowing and encouraging students to read poetry aloud often. Poetry today is such  a foreign subject for secondary students that they may need time to get used to its concepts, but  students are more than capable of coming to grasp the intricacies that make up Frost or Williams.

If students are reading, writing, and understanding poetry, we will be left with a classroom of students who appreciate it a little more, who are a little more involved. Poetry teaches many valuable things, says Johnson. Not only do we open the door for our students to further delve into poetry, we also encourage them to examine deeper meanings, tone, emotion, word choice, and other tools that will assist the as they continue to explore the wide world of literary benefits.

http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.uvu.edu/stable/pdf/809989.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A25d139026feef58b24ccac110bdda243

Strategies for Incorporating Poetry in a Student Friendly Way

https://www.edutopia.org/blog/re-creating-poets-joshua-block

This article is interesting because it points out the fact that everyone has the ability to be a poet inside of them—it’s continuing to write that sets one person apart from the other. However, no one said it is easy to read and write poetry. Students should be pushed to think about poetry in more forms that just the written verse that they are used to. For example, song lyrics are poetry that we sing and put music to. Joshua Block, the writer of this article, has found four strategies that he has found helpful in making poetry more fun and expansive. His first strategy is “establish a culture of individual and communal observation and exploration.” In this strategy he has the students begin to think about poetry by using poetry about poetry. He also teaches students how to mark up poems with a color-coded writing system. He explains that this helps students to see that they all view poetry in different ways depending on how that poem affected them. His second strategy is “read poems aloud and encourage students to respond creatively.” Poetry was mean to be read aloud so reading it aloud in class is important for our students. Block states, “[e]ach time we look at a new poem as a class, we hear it read out loud twice by students before we start to look at it more closely.” His third strategy is “use a range of model poems to introduce new forms.” He has the students look at poems that do more than just rhyme. He shows the different ways that they can say similar things to make it easier for the students to write their own poems. His final strategy is “poetry portfolios and a celebration of poetry.” Block suggest that creating a poetry portfolio is a great way for students to collect authors works, information about authors, and collect the work they have created. He then ends his poetry unit by having a celebration where students recite a memorized poem to the class that they have written.

An important thing to remember when teaching a poetry unit is teaching students about the different writing and that every work their classmates create is a work of art. None of them are professionals. When having students do an activity where they recite a work of their own to the class, it is important to ensure that you have created an environment where students feel safe sharing. Not everyone is going to be confident, but it is a lot easier to get up in front of your peers when you know that it’s a safe environment. Making the end of the unit in to a celebration is a great way for students to feel like their own work is worth reading and being proud of. I think making it in to a celebration is a great way to encourage students and end a unit in a fun way. I also think that it is important for students to know more about different styles of poetry. Exposing them to the same poems all the time doesn’t help them understand the great diversity that we have in our world.