Ideas for Classroom Poetry Composition (Memo 3a)

While searching through our classroom texts, I kept a couple things in mind. One, what are some benefits to teaching poetry in a classroom and two, what are some approaches one could take. I also wanted to see if any chapters included anything specific about poetry.

While looking through Language Learners in the English Classroom, by Douglas Fisher, Carol Rothenberg, and Nancy Frey, I came across the chapter about Vocabulary.  In this chapter, it states that “Vocabulary knowledge is one of the best indicators of verbal ability”. It also states that “Disadvantaged students are likely to have substantially smaller vocabularies than their more advantaged classmates” and a “Lack of vocabulary can be a crucial factor underlying the school failure of disadvantaged students.”  The text proposes a number of possible solutions to helping students with this problem. One of these solutions is teacher read-alouds, “From a student perspective, the read-aloud is a helpful way to learn content and vocabulary”.

I have had my teachers read in class. Let me tell you personally, reading a large text, or a Shakespearian text (as much as I LOVE Shakespeare) can be very boring; sleep inducing even. However, the reason these may not have been as successful as the text claims it could be was because it was long and difficult to comprehend. Also, if anyone has actually seen a high school class, most of the students are not following along anyway; they may be texting under their desk, spacing off, etc.

The text does give a number of ways to avoid this problem:

1.       Select books that are appropriate to students’ interests and match their developmental, emotional, and social levels.

2.       Preview and practice the selection.

3.       Establish a clear purpose for the read aloud.

4.       Model fluent oral reading while reading the text.

5.       Be animated and use expression.

6.       Stop periodically and thoughtfully question the students to focus them on specific parts of the text.

7.       Make connections to independent reading and writing.

One of the examples of a good read aloud option was a poem, Lewis Carol’s “Jabberwocky”. Because the poem has a fairly complex and nonsense driven vocabulary, the poem is fairly difficult to comprehend and, if just merely read aloud or if students were asked to read it on their own, they probably would forget most of it because it was difficult to understand. However, by the teacher sharing her thinking with the students, not only does she provide her own interpretation, she is demonstrating her thinking and pointing out some context clues for the students. After that, they learn to model her behavior and create some interpretations of their own.

I think poems are great tools for read-alouds like this. They are fairly short and most have some very rich language. Not to mention there are so many kinds of poems varying in theme and reader interests. As I mentioned at the start of this I-Search, it is probably the easiest to find poems from a specific point in time and using those to relate to a specific text.

After reading this chapter briefly, I also believe that poems, because of their language usage, are great tools for teaching vocabulary. Not only are students exposed to vocabulary by listening, but also through composition. They can read a number of similar poems and, after hearing them read aloud or reading them aloud themselves, can compose a “found poem”. We experimented with found poems in class recently; essentially, a found poem is creating your own poem using the vocabulary in a poem you read. These words have to be ones that stuck out to you or that you did not understand. Students can create found poems and, if there is vocabulary they do not know, it is a good opportunity for teachers to establish context clue seeking and maybe introduce the Oxford English Dictionary to students. From there, the students can take their found knowledge and compose a poem. Or, they can even create a poem about their confusion and, in turn, discover the meaning in another way. 

I was having a difficult time trying to find some useful data in Kelly Gallagher’s Write Like This for my I-Search, and almost put the book aside until I came across a BRILLIANT writing idea for students. In chapter 2, Gallagher provides a helpful writing prompt to help students express and reflect.

One way to spark expressive and reflective writing in your classroom is by having each student bring in a treasured family photograph to class. Last time I did this with  my class, I cheated a bit by bringing in two photographs—one of each of my grandmothers…When I study the two photos, I like to consider what I have taken from each of my grandmothers…(1)Don’t sweat the small stuff and (2) It’s all small stuff.

From there, he was able to bring up a few writing ideas and asks students to write what is important to them, either based on the photo or who the person in the photo may have taught them.

I think it would be a great pre-writing assignment to compose a poem doing the same thing that Gallagher was asking students to do. Later, perhaps after some discussion about expression and reflection, students can work on larger assignments (i.e.: paragraphs and essay format reflections). 

I think that these different methods of composition are also good ideas for teaching reading and writing in general, which is our overall goal as English teachers. It is beneficial to have a number of ideas up and ready when teaching students how to write and to prepare them for larger assignments that they may not feel ready for. This is one of the reasons I am loving the teaching of poetry more and more. Because poetry can break the mold, it can really give students a chance to see how language works, including word play, vocabulary usage, pronunciation, and so on. They can take what they learn and apply it to their own writing and composition, and carry that on to essays and SATs and general writing. These two methods in particular are great gateways into larger writing and can carry what they learn into other classrooms!

Photos taken by me.