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.