I must say, I am not, nor have I ever been drawn to poetry the way I am drawn to literature. I have always had difficulty interpreting it, and must have had a negative experience with this as a young child, because to this day I dread it when I am given a passage to decipher. However, I do distinctly remember some of my English teachers making poetry fun,.making it come alive, and making me interested in it just by the way they taught. Chapter 5 does a nice job of reminding me that poetry can be fun, and I can enjoy teaching it to students who will most likely have the same reservations about it as I do.
I love the theme of Chapter 5, which I believe tells us as pre-service teachers that if we expect to get our students involved in the reading, writing, and deciphering of poetry, we must bring it to them in a way that interests them and doesn't go over their heads. I think that is one of the most difficult things about poetry; it seems like this huge, insurmountable masterpiece that we feel we can never fully grasp. Not so, not so. I appreciated the found poetry section of this chapter, which is something to which I was introduced by one of our classmates last year, Danna. She brought in an activity similar to the one in the book that I think will really work for high school students. I am a big advocate of using magazines and other media for found poetry, because it starts students out with something they are interested in and that they can choose. The activities on pages 133 and 134 are particularly of interest to me because I think they can be used cross-curriculum for social studies as well. For example, if I gave the students current newspapers and had them do activity 5-1 on page 135, the students would be able to read and understand the article, and also create poetry, covering their bases in English and Social Studies. This could even be refined for inclusion in the portfolio.
Reading on, I was so impressed with the way in which the authors of this text advocate the use of music in a unit on poetry. I think it is important to embrace the things in which students are interested, to validate those interests. By asking students to select appropriate musical lyrics to bring to class for discussion, you give them some ownership in creating the assignment in a way, thus making them feel included and also letting them know that you as a teacher are interested in them as people. I think this lends itself to strengthening the classroom community atmosphere, and increases student involvement.
I was also happy to have the list of feelings on page 145. This would be so useful in a lesson on poetry if I were to encounter students that are having trouble expressing themselves with their words, which I am sure will happen. It will be nice to have this list handy to make copies of and hand out to students.
This chapter does such a nice job of making sources available and giving examples of each concept. I haven't always had such good luck with textbooks designed for teacher education. So many texts I have been required to purchase seem to be written by people that haven't been in the classroom teaching for many years and base their information on studies done on select groups of students. This text is so much more practical than that; it quotes actual practicing teachers and gives evidence that the activities work.
Finally, I must say that I have been enlightened by reading this chapter. As one who doesn't LOVE poetry, it is nice to feel like I am excited about teaching it, and admitting to students that I have a history of having difficulty with reading and writing it. Hopefully, together we can revive poetry in our classroom and create something new and fantastic. I would like to try some of these activities out in my student teaching, if the curriculum allows for it of course.