Children and adolescents who are exposed to poetry as an enjoyable pursuit, both the reading of it and the writing of it, are not only more likely to appreciate poems as adults but are also going to be better readers, writers and thinkers in general.
Poems that are approached as aural creations, drawn from the richness of language and the poet’s life experiences will be relished at much greater depth than poems approached as problems to be worked out or mysteries to be mapped and dissected. Teachers who develop a love for poetry in their students are always memorable educators.
Here are several ideas for classroom exploration of poetry with adolescent students.
Making Poems from the Great Outdoors
If heading outdoors is an option and the class size is not too large, there are ways to bring poetry into the outside world. One possibility is called Poetry Frisbee and it involves dividing the students into teams of three. One student is a recorder and two to others are players, though they all take turns. A student says a word, throws the Frisbee and when it is caught the other player says a word that joins to it. The recorder writes it all down. If the Frisbee is dropped then the recorder becomes one of the players and so forth. The aim of this activity is to energize students and loosen up both their bodies and minds in relation to language.
Another idea is a Poetry Walk. For this, take the students through a nearby trail in a park and have them write down everything they find or see. They should use all their senses to access their environment fully. Then back in the classroom, students can turn these notes into a series of haikus or a travel diary written in verse form on their experience. They can also imagine becoming one of the landscape’s topographical features and compose this entity’s memoir. This activity engages the student’s entire sensory apparatus and allows them to witness the expansive possibilities of poetry.
Writing Poetry from Life’s Inspirations
Ask students to bring a poem or a set of song lyrics to class that they particularly enjoy. They can pick from the provided anthology if necessary. Give them some time to think about what they like about the piece and why. This could be anything from the imagery and the rhythm to the content or the literary techniques used.
In one session, they can report on their findings to the class and in the next session, they can bring in their own poem or song that utilizes the techniques they learned from studying the prior piece. This exercise teaches students how to construct poems by learning from other poets or songwriters and absorbing their texts.
A further way of engaging students in poetry is to allow them to write on fun topics such as: my first crime, the craziest thing I ever did to get a boy’s/girl’s attention, or if you were the ruler of the world for a day what would you do? Emphasize that they are writing poems and not stories in this case by getting them to connect the content with a rhyme scheme, a traditional form or by introducing similes, anaphora or other poetic techniques. Such an exercise encourages students to draw from experience and imagination while learning how to compose poems.
Adolescents respond with enthusiasm to the reading and writing of poetry when it’s taught with vigor and energy. Teachers can draw from external and internal sources to facilitate the enjoyment and creation of poems.
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