Comprehension is Key
When it comes to poetry many of us have preconceived feelings about it. Students too have usually already decided whether they like or dislike it. You might hear a student say, "I just don't get poetry," or "I can never figure out what a poem means." Most often we hear, "It's boring." It's rare when you meet a young student who knows how wide of a subject poetry really is, that poetry covers a range of topics through many different styles, voices, and formats. An educator who can share a variety of poems and poets with their students is one thing, but one who can find specific poems and poets that relate to the student body and students' interests has a better chance of enticing students to engage in poetry. To teach poetry one should have some intimate knowledge of a verity of poems and authors. Find the poems you love and share them. Have students find lyrics to music they love and share those. Start with engaging in a belief that your students may actually enjoy poetry. The problem of engaging students in poetry may not be a matter of interest but rather and matter of comprehension. Anyone would struggle to find interest in something they find difficult to understand. Teachers can't always teach enjoyment, but we can teach comprehension strategies while sharing our enjoyment. And often comprehension is the key that opens a student up to an appreciation they didn't know they could have.
Applying Explicit Instruction in Comprehension (Modeling Reading Strategies for Poetry)
Beers strongly suggests that modeling is a sure way to offer students direct and explicit instruction. If we model our own reading strategies in front of our students and talk through it, sharing our thinking, we will give our students a real-life example of how to engage with a text using specific strategies.
1. "First, decide what specific strategies you want to model and what text to use."
Example: Let's say I want to model these three strategies: connecting text to personal experience, questioning a text, and looking for repetition. On my own, I may want to read a number of my favorite poems keeping those strategies in mind. I'd also want to look at poems my students may find interesting. For this example, I've decided to use the poem "Alcatraz" by Sharon Olds.
2. "Next, tell your students exactly what strategies you'll be practicing while reading this passage."
Example: Before reading Olds' poem I would tell my students that I will be using three strategies to help me understand it. We might discuss the strategies in some detail if we haven't gone over them before or do a quick review. "As I read this poem, called "Alcatraz," I'm going to purposefully look for segments that remind me of my own experiences. For example, I've visited the prison (which is now a sort of museum) and know that it is known for being inescapable. Already, using only the title of the poem, I can think about times and places when I felt trapped. I've been stuck in daycares and schools. My high school had fences with barbed wire. I also remember countless times when I was taken to live with my dad when all I wanted was to stay with my mom. These parts of my life connect to that one word: Alcatraz. Whenever I can relate parts of a poem to my own experience I will discover emotional ways to connect to it and feel what it's doing.
"But I'm also going to use two other strategies. I will pause to question the poem. When I come across something confusing are that seems to contradict itself I'm going to wonder out loud, 'why is it saying that? what could mean?' This strategy is called 'questioning the text.' I'll also be looking for repetition. Are there words, images, or ideas that repeat throughout the poem? When something repeats it's often a hint about the meaning or focus.
"Alright, here I go!"
3. "Then, read the passage to the students, modeling the strategies."
Example: With a poem, I might go ahead and read it once all the way through and share a couple thoughts out loud at the end before reading it a second time and modeling in segments. Or I might model as I read it the first time and then read as a whole after that. Either way, I find it beneficial to read a poem twice. I might even mention that as a fourth reading strategy. It works for me to read any poem twice. I'm better prepared to notice things I missed if I read it a second time. For this example I'll only share what it looks like to read a poem and model strategies in a segmented read-through. As I read the poem I stop to think aloud, modeling the strategies. It's important to put the book down or have some clear indicator that marks thinking aloud instead of reading. Modeling may look a little like this:
"Alcatraz"
*put the book down.
"I've already mentioned how this reminds me of times when I've felt trapped. There was no escape from my dad's house when I was young. No escape from school either. Oh, and there was also detention. Never liked getting detention."
*pick the book back up.
"When I was a girl, I knew I was a man..."
*book down.
"What? A girl was a man? Well, this looks like a contradiction if I've ever seen one. How could she have known she was a man when she was a girl? That's my question. But I'll move on. Maybe she'll tell me."
*book up.
"When I was a girl, I knew I was a man
because they might send me to Alcatraz
and only men went to Alcatraz."
*book down
"Oh. Hmm. This sort of explains it. Only men went to Alcatraz and someone was threatening to send her there. She must have believed them to some extent, right? Only men go there, she knew that, but she was a girl. So, she must've somehow been a man if she was to take the threat seriously. Maybe this is how the author is telling me how serious the threat seemed to her when she was young."
*book up
"Every time we drove to the city I'd
see it there, white as a white
shark in the shark-rich Bay, the bars like
milk-white ribs."
*book down
"She's talking about the prison. Hmmm, 'white, white, shark, shark, Bay, bars, milk-white.' We have some repetition there! White, shark, and 'ba" sounds. Puts a Great White Shark in my head. I can see teeth too. There was lots of white. She used the word three times! White is usually about... I don't know, like being clean, maybe innocence? That would interesting. Innocence next to all those sharks and the bars? Let's see."
*book up
"I knew I had pushed my
parents too far, my inner badness had
spread like ink and taken me over, I could
not control my terrible thoughts,
terrible looks, and they had often said
they would send me there—maybe the very next
time I spilled my milk, Ala
Cazam, the iron doors would slam, I'd be
there where I belonged, a girl-faced man in the
prison no one had escaped from."
*book down
"Well this passage was longer. It's one sentence but there's a lot there. I see now it was her parents who threatened her with Alcatraz. Were they joking? They knew they couldn't send her there. Could've been fear tactics though. My mom would use those. When she wanted me to do what she said she would bring up 'the bad man.' Boy, that'd scare me. 'Pick up your mess,' she'd say, and if I didn't do it she'd say, 'Pick up your mess or else the bad man will come.' And guess what? I'd sure as hell pick up my mess. I'd also look out the window of hours after wondering if I'd picked things up fast enough to stop the bad man from coming. This poem is reminding me of that.
"But look here. I'm also noticing something else. Remember all that white? Well, I thought about innocence but now she's talking about ink and her badness. It's like the opposite of innocence. She's guilty. Or feels guilty. And guilty of what? Spilling her milk? Another white thing. Ink and milk. Is she confusing the two? Maybe as a girl she thought a small accident like spilling milk was a grave sin! Maybe her parents made her feel that way! I don't know for sure, but, it's what I'm wondering."
I won't show you the whole poem. But even half-way through there was enough content to model questioning the text, looking for repetition, and relating the poem to personal experience. Modeling can disrupt the flow of a poem which is one reason I recommend reading it twice, once all the way through. But depending on the poem or the class discussion this whole read-though may be a better beginning or end to the modeling.
Example: Right after modeling I would give the class a chance to practice those specific strategies. I would try to use the same author to keep continuity and keep my example relevant to their practice. I might even break the class into groups and have each group focus on just one strategy and rotate the practiced strategies with subsequent poems. For this lesson I would use the poems "San Francisco," "Late Poem to My Father," and "I Go Back to May 1937." These are all by Sharon Olds and are all about her parents. Students focus on one of the three strategies for each poem and therefore get a chance to practice each one.
5. "Continue modeling as students' needs indicate or when the genre changes."
Example: Each time the class finishes a poem and before we rotate strategies we would discuss our findings. I might model reading a passage here or there if some big things were overlooked before moving on.
6. "Finally, give students opportunities to try the strategies without your coaching or support."
Example: This last step is an important one. I would want to have the students independently read some poetry using these strategies and gather their own findings and interpret their own meanings. As educators we never want to teach a poem, we should teach students how to read poetry for themselves. Without a chance to do it on their own there is little point in teaching them strategies. I find the focus on teaching strategies super beneficial and important. It gives students something to take with them to face future challenges and to feel competent and to be successful at the things they decide to do.
Alcatraz
by Sharon Olds
When I was a girl, I knew I was a man
because the might send me to Alcatraz
and only men went to Alcatraz.
Every time we drove to the city I'd
see it there, white as a white
shark in the shark-rich Bay, the bars like
milk-white ribs. I knew I had pushed my
parents too far, my inner badness had
spread like ink and taken me over, I could
not control my terrible thoughts,
terrible looks, and they had often said
they would send me there—maybe the very next
time I spilled me milk, Ala
Cazam, the iron doors would slam, I'd be
there where I belonged, a girl-faced man in the
prison no one had escaped from. I did not
fear the other prisoners,
I knew who they were, men like me who had
spilled their milk one time too many,
not been able to curb their thoughts—
what I feared was the horror of the circles: circles of
sky around the earth, circle of
land around the Bay, circle of
water around the island, circle of
sharks around the shore, circle of
outer walls, inner walls,
iron girders, steel bars,
circle of my cell around me, and there at the
center, the glass of milk and the guard's
eyes upon me as I reached out for it.
Beers, G. K. (2003). When Kids Can't Read: What Teachers Can Do. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Print.
Olds, S. (1987). The Gold Cell. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Print.
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