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| Student board celebrating National Poetry Month |
When it comes to poetry, my students often get discouraged because they feel like they don’t understand what poems are trying to say due to the nuance of poetry devices. The first thing I tell them is that anyone can write a poem. I do this in two different ways: imagery and blackout poetry, and I frame my unit with these two things.
- Imagery Poem: Imagery is “visually descriptive figurative language using the five senses.” Before we even talk about poetry, I have my students write about their favorite food using each of the five senses: see, touch, hear, smell, and taste. This is usually a five-minute beginning of class activity and I remind them not to overthink it, to write the first thing that pops up in their head. You can find my lesson here.
- Lyric Poetry: I once took a class on the best ways to teach poetry from Laura Randazzo and I still use many of her techniques in my classroom to date. She suggested comparing and contrasting modern songs to older-style songs. My favorite comparison is "Stereo Hearts" by Gym Class Heroes (2011) and "My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose" by Robert Burns (1794) because they are using similes and metaphors to compare love in their lyrics. This leads me to my first project.
- Figurative Language in Song Lyrics: After comparing songs and studying different styles of lyrical poetry such as sonnets, psalms, dramatic, and ballads, students must showcase a type of poetic device using song lyrics. They get to present/or read their findings to the class and explain in a presentation how what they choose is figurative language and what it means. This is a fun project for my students because they get to listen to music and examine their favorite songs more closely.
- Rhyme Games or Poetry Slam: I do this when I teach my 9th Grade “Sonnets”. As we mentioned in the podcast, sonnets are a bit hard to follow if you don’t understand Shakespeare or rhyming. This game can also easily turn into a poetry slam because Shakespeare’s sonnets are a lot like rap music. I use "Sonnet 18" by William Shakespeare, and I read it really quickly to my students like I am rapping it, and then I show them a parody of the same poem by an unknown writer on my Sonnet Worksheet and challenge my students to write their own parodies. If they have trouble rhyming, I direct them to RhymeZone.
Alternate Forms of Poetry: I like to teach my students blackout poetry, which I will go into detail about in a future blog. I also like to teach students about found poetry, which is similar to blackout poetry, and book spine poetry (pictured), which is made by stacking books on top of each other in different ways. These are some of the simplest ways to make poetry.
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| Book Spine Poetry |
- Poem in Your Pocket Day: On the upcoming podcast, I also mention “Poem in Your Pocket Day” which will take place this month on April 29th. The idea is to take a small poem that fits in your pocket and make that your poem for the day. The Academy of American Poets has a few suggestions on how everyone can celebrate National Poetry Month such as drawing an image of your chosen poem, recording yourself reading it and uploading it on social media, or making an origami sculpture out of the poem. I uploaded a PDF of their suggestions here.
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| Poem in Your Pocket |
I encourage my readers to not be intimidated by poetry because everyone is a poet, even if they don’t know it. Explore poetry with some of my suggestions above, and when you are ready, give some of my favorite classics a try (listed below). Let’s continue the conversation on our Facebook Page and our Facebook Group MMC Chat.
Some of My Favorite Classic Poems:
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