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poetry Poetry Power
TIPS FOR TEACHING POETRY


Here are some ideas to help you and your students get involved with reading and writing poetry. Sources with additional information and guidance are listed at the end of this guide.

Reading Poetry With Students
The best way to get students interested in writing poetry is first to spend time reading poetry together and helping students become familiar with poetry as a way of expressing feelings and ideas.

Make the reading of poetry part of your classroom routine and try reading a different poem a day or the same poem every day for a week or two. Read your favorite poems or students’ favorite poems. Read poems about different subjects and celebrations. After hearing a variety of poems, students will begin to recognize what different kinds of poetry sound like, and they will begin to understand what makes a poem a poem.

Invite students to talk freely about what they experienced during the poetry readings. You may guide students with questions such as these:
1. How did the poem(s) make you feel? What parts of the poems made you feel that way?
2. How do you show what you are feeling or thinking about?
3. Discuss features of the poem(s)—repetition, rhythm, sound, rhyme (if it is a rhyming poem), imagery, humor, ambiguity, unusual words, unusual use of words, and so on.
4. What do you think makes a poem a poem?
5. How are poems different from stories?
6.
Do you think poems are easier or harder to understand than stories? Why?

Invite students to look through poetry anthologies with you. Browse through several anthologies, holding up various pages so students can see that poems vary in length and physical shape and that an anthology contains poems by many different writers. Once students have started writing their own poems, they can create a class anthology, complete with illustrations and bound into book format.

Organize a poetry center in the classroom, and make it available for students to use throughout the year. Place your favorite books of poetry in the center and encourage students to bring in their favorite poetry books, too. Add books borrowed from the school library, rotating the selections on a regular basis. Try to include some books of poetry written by children, and be sure to include many books with free-verse, non-rhyming poetry, because this kind of poetry will be much easier for students to write on their own.

Poetry Power, Table of Contents

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