My practice is to read it three times before we start discussing it. It’s only after that they receive a copy of the poem. Each student gets a sentence (multiple copies of the same sentence for larger classes), and I then ask them to write about whatever that sentence brings to mind.Īfter writing, I ask for sharing in small groups, then with the class. I break the poem into complete sentences based on its punctuation, then print them and cut the sentences apart. Starting this way has lessened the hackles that come up when I say we’re going to read poetry, but I still hear, “I’m not good at understanding poetry.” My favorite way to teach it was shamelessly stolen from a National Writing Project session, so thank you to whomever first created it. We use our feelings and experiences to arrive there, but if we don’t base our conclusions on evidence from the poem, we’ve missed the meaning. In the middle, I explain, is where we try to discover the poet’s intention as we follow his clues. The poem also means something to the reader that is determined only by the reader. Now, before teaching poetry, I draw a Venn diagram and label one side “the reader” and the other “the poet.” I explain the poem means something to the poet that can’t be expressed to anyone else. A student wailed, “You’ve ruined this poem for me forever, and I loved it before!” In a different class, I told them I’d read Robert Frost and said his poem “The Road Less Traveled” was written as a private joke between him and a friend. The first time I taught poetry, a student adamantly informed me, “A poem means whatever I think it means.” When I demurred, she insisted that a teacher with much more experience than I had told her so.
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