Begin the Year With Poetry

The end of the first semester was approaching. A copy of the curriculum outline lay on the desk in front of the teacher as she perused the units listed and checked off what she had accomplished with her sophomore literature class thus far. Short story selections – check. The novel: A Separate Peace – check. Drama: Julius Caesar – check. Nonfiction selection – check. Various writing assignments – check. The only unit left to cover in the short week before the semester final was poetry. Reluctantly, she entered her poetry unit into her lesson plan book.

Although many teachers say they dislike teaching poetry, even more students say they hate poetry. Just the mention of poetry to my sophomores brings about various comments: “Poetry sucks!,” “I don’t understand poetry.,” “Do we hafta?,” and other negative comments. Many students, however, don’t acknowledge the fact that their music is poetic in nature, or that poetry is abundant in the world around them, and that aspects of poetry are present in the literature they read.

As I began creating my plans for this school year, I decided to juggle things around. Although our teachers follow a curriculum outline listing the selections to be covered, nothing dictates in what order the units should be taught. Therefore, instead of waiting until the end of the semester for my poetry unit, I decided to address poetry first, but during the first couple of days never mention the word poetry. In focusing on poetry as my first literature unit, I would be able to address almost everything connected with literature analysis and study.

After the bell rang, I played the song “Twilight Zone” by Manhattan Transfer and asked them to listen to the words in the introduction. When the song finished, I began by talking about a writer’s diction, and the figurative language devices used to create the mental pictures or movies of the ideas the author wants to get across. Similes are wonderful to use first because the can lead into a discussion about clichés. Placing three half similes on the chalkboard (as green as …, as hard as …, as cold as …), I asked the students for ideas on how to complete the statements. The first responses I got were, as expected, cliches. “Green as the grass.” “Hard as a rock.” “Cold as ice.” After explaining why these were clichés, we worked on the board, using the same half similes, to create more picturesque ones. Then, as homework, I gave them a worksheet of half-similes to complete. After similes, I covered metaphors, onomatopoeia, personification, and imagery. Finally, I delved into more abstract ideas such as oxymorons and paradoxes where I utilized the children’s books, “I Never Saw a Chocolate Moose” and “The King Who Rained.”

Go To Page: 1 2

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic