Teaching poetry can be intimidating for teachers and students. Making the most of teaching poetry requires the best resources and a clear set of procedures. Over the years, I’ve developed a favorite system for helping students pre-reading poetry. It has been a gamer changer for my students! It’s also one of the best resources for demystifying poetry and making it manageable for teachers and students.
Since poetry is intimidating, it’s essential to give students an option for approaching any text. This also helps take some of the stress off teachers. However, sometimes proximity, repetition, and education are the best strategies to overcome uncertainty.
If you’re looking for options and strategies to become more adept with poetry, these are the best resources for you. They will help you find the procedures, lessons, and projects that make poetry meaningful.
4 Simple Steps for Pre-Reading Poetry
Everyone loves TPCASTT. It’s a good acronym to guide students through the process of reading poetry. But oftentimes my students are so intimidated by poetry that they can’t even get started. So I teach my students these four steps before reading a poem. Each one of these steps is designed to help students break down a poem so it becomes less intimidating. These steps work for ANY poem and empower students to take ownership of a text.
5 Creative Lessons for Teachers that Hate Poetry
Let me confess: I don’t love every piece of literature I teach. A student performance of “The Yellow Wall-paper” left an indelible mark. For a period in my career, I came to hate poetry. Students never knew how to handle it, I couldn’t package the lessons correctly, and I never knew quite what I was teaching with poetry. Overtime, I have worked through these struggles. I have developed a system that helps all students approach poetry. Similarly, I have learned how to make the most of teaching poetry. And these 5 fun, creative, low-stress options can help ANY teacher make room for poetry in her class.
How to Scaffold Poetry Instruction in Middle and High School
I know that teaching poetry is not every ELA teacher’s forte, but it’s my teacher superpower! Over the years, I’ve refined the process to scaffold poetry instruction. When I’m introducing poetry the first time, I start with a couple questions: Firstly, what have students previously learned about how to read a poem? Then, what topics, subjects, or content would engage students, even those reluctant to read poetry? Similarly, what is the optimum reading level for this lesson? At what level will students be successful? Finally, what is the goal of the lesson–to introduce poetry? Here you will find all the resources to scaffold poetry instruction for all learners.
5 Lessons to Make the Most of Poetry in the Classroom
Teaching poetry is one of my teaching superpowers. Poetry is a great tool for teaching specific skills, including tone, connotation, syntax, text structure, historical context, figurative language, and literary devices.
Make the Most of Poetry Instruction by Teaching Meter
Poetic meter is a challenge for many teachers. But incorporating meter into poetry instruction brings new light to old texts. These strategies will help!
How Not to Kill a Love of Poetry
I was in college before I loved poetry. Prior to that, I hated poetry because it was a language no one taught me to speak. Poetry was an incomprehensible collection of sounds and images and rhymes. Clearly, poets had some kind of cypher key they only gave to teachers. And my mom bought off-brand cereal, so I didn’t find a matching cypher key at the bottom of the box. So what happened in college? What turned me around on poetry and helped me learn to love poetry? Someone taught me how to read poetry. That’s it. Once I knew how, a whole new world was open! Do the same for your students.
Best Resources for Teaching Poetry
As I start to collect the best resources for teaching poetry, these are the tools I turn to. When I meet a new teacher, these are the pieces I select and share. Over the years, these are the tools that have helped me turn teaching poetry into my superpower!
- First, these four steps for pre-reading any poem are an absolute must! These steps have transformed the way I teach poetry!
- Additionally, poetry task cards are a fun way to engage students in poetry study. Over the years, task cards have become a favorite strategy for differentiation, collaboration, and movement!
- Finally, poetry is a tool I often use for standard-specific interventions. To make this process go more smoothly, I have put together poetry collections to represent a variety of standards. Check out these poems for teaching main idea, text structure, vocabulary, characterization, point of view, and story elements.
