7 Fun, Idea-Filled Posts about Teaching Poetry

 

National Poetry Month is coming up.  If you would like some ideas click  here for your class click here  hopefully after checking out my amazon.ca ads below.    If you are making any   amazon.ca purchases  please click on my links below first as I will get a small commission on anything you buy even if it is something else as long as it is within 24 hours.   Thanks.  Remember you can follow me by clicking on the blue follow button above. This post may contain affiliate links that earns me  a commission at no extra cost to you. 

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Power Lesson: Poetry Gallery Walk

If you are doing any poetry in your class this lesson/assignment with a gallery walk might be just the right thing for your class.  To read the article click here hopefully after checking out my amazon.ca ads below.    If you are making any   amazon.ca purchases  please click on my links below first as I will get a small commission on anything you buy even if it is something else as long as it is within 24 hours.   Thanks.  Remember you can follow me by clicking on the blue follow button above. This post may contain affiliate links that earns me  a commission at no extra cost to you. 

Do you shop online?  Would you like to get money back?  Rakuten is an awesome site that gives you Cash Back when you shop online. With over 750 stores, including Hudson’s Bay, Indigo.ca, Canadian Tire, Walmart, and Sephora, you get paid to shop for things you’re already buying.  Right now get a $30 Cash Bonus credited to your account and mine when you join today and make a $30 purchase within 30 days!  We both win. Payouts are quarterly.  I downloaded their chrome extension button so when I online shop I won't forget to use Rakuten.

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Verse by Verse

 

I just tried out Verse by Verse by an AI site by Google.  Select 3 famous poets and type out your first line of your poem and then V by V will select three lines of poetry by each poet for you to pick what you want for the second line etc.  Click here to see the site.  Here is my poem below.

World Poetry Day and Social Justice

 

World Poetry Day is March 21 as declared by UNESCO.  There is a site that you might want to look at which is a great resource for Social Justice poetry including workshops.  It is called "Split This Rock".  According to their website, "Split This Rock cultivates, teaches, and celebrates poetry that bears witness to injustice and provokes social change. It calls poets to a greater role in public life and fosters a national network of socially engaged poets. Building the audience for poetry of provocation and witness from our home in the nation’s capital, we celebrate poetic diversity and the transformative power of the imagination.

Split This Rock explores and celebrates the many ways that poetry can act as an agent for change: reaching across differences, considering personal and social responsibility, asserting the centrality of the right to free speech, bearing witness to the diversity and complexity of human experience through language, imagining a better world.

Split This Rock is dedicated to revitalizing poetry as a living, breathing art form with profound relevance in our daily lives and struggles. Our programs integrate poetry of provocation and witness into movements for social justice and support the poets of all ages who write and perform this vital work.

The name "Split This Rock" is pulled from a line in “Big Buddy,” a poem from Langston Hughes.

Don’t you hear this hammer ring?

I’m gonna split this rock

And split it wide!

When I split this rock,

Stand by my side."

To see the website click here.

Lesson Plan on Poetry that ties to History & Current Events

 

If you are doing a unit in either poetry, history or current events this might work for you.  It deals with the 22 year old Amanda Gorman's Inaugural poem "The Hill We Climb".  To see the website click here.

Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven and Homer

With Halloween coming up, I always think of E.A.P. and The Raven.  To see what I posted previously about him click here.  I also love to look at Homer's version of The Raven.  See below.

TED ED has a video on E.A.P. see below 

Poetry Knowledge Organizer

If you are teaching poetry here is a nice handout (thanks Stuart Pryke) for your students or you can use as slide in class.  To see the organizer click here.

Piclits

I posted this last school year but I thought it deserved another go this school year.  According to M.T. Christel, "To foster deep student engagement with images and their analysis, students can easily use the PicLit website, which provides a treasure trove of preselected images to examine for visual composition, emotional appeal and narrative potential. "  The site is like a meme generator but the pictures selected do not beg sarcastic comment but rather have high end aesthetic value.  Your students can select a picture and then drag and drop words or for older students select free-style  and type on there own.  The pictures to me, beg poetry.  See some student examples below.

To see the website click here.  For a 4 minute demo watch the video below.

Poetry 180

This site is from Billy Collins, US Poet Laureate 2001-03.  It is designed with high school students in mind.  It is basically a different poem to be read or listened to for every school day.  To see the website click here.

Scholastic Art and Writing Awards

According to their site, "Through the Scholastic Awards, teens in grades 7–12 from public, private, or home schools can apply in 29 categories of art and writing for their chance to earn scholarships and have their works exhibited and published. Beyond the Awards, the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers produces a number of programs to support creative students and their educators, including the Art.Write.Now.Tour, the National Student Poets Program, the Scholastic Awards Summer Workshops and Scholastic Awards Summer Scholarships programs, the Golden Educators Residency, and much more." 

Even better these awards are available to grade 7-12 US, Canadian and American schools abroad.  Yes I said Canadian.  To see the website click here.  To see the categories, look below. 

PicLits

According to M.T. Christel, "To foster deep student engagement with images and their analysis, students can easily use the PicLit website, which provides a treasure trove of preselected images to examine for visual composition, emotional appeal and narrative potential. "  The site is like a meme generator but the pictures selected do not beg sarcastic comment but rather have high end aesthetic value.  Your students can select a picture and then drag and drop words or for older students select free-style  and type on there own.  The pictures to me, beg poetry.  See some student examples below.

To see the website click here.  For a 4 minute demo watch the video below.

poets.org

Poets.org comes from the Academy of American Poets.  For teachers this site features: lesson plans, "teach this poem", links and "Dear Poet".  For both students and teachers there is poem of the day.  They also have a curated collection of poems.   To see the site click here.

Write The World

According to AASL, "A site committed to the improvement of the writing of high school students via a global online community and guided interactive process. Young writers are encouraged to find their voices in writing, polish their editing, and publish on an international platform. Write the World also aids students in developing tools that will aid them in writing and communication for success in school, career, and life. Geared toward high school, use for poetry slams and writing competitions. "

To see the website click here.

How To Have Fun With Poetry

Last week I posted on Black Out poetry.  Maybe I should have put this one first but oh well.  If you are teaching a unit on Poetry you might want to check out the post on The Secondary English Coffee Shop.  It includes a one page survey for your students and some ideas you might implement in your poetry unit.  To see the post click here.

Black Out Poetry

If you are doing poetry this semester or next semester Black Out Poetry might be an option for your class.  Also if you teach Art you might be interested in trying this.  If your library has many weeded books or old magazines or even newspapers they could be used to tear apart.  You will need many coloured pencils and pens that your students can use and some space like the desks in my library.  Below are some examples of some high end Black Out Art.

To see Tyler Ducas's work click here

To see Sue Olson's work click here

To see Angela Watson's work click here

Here is a picture from @MrsCraigsClass of her students completed work hanging on the classroom walls

Web Poets' Society and the Learning Network

Online poetry via instagram and twitter have made at least one young author a celebrity poet.  The article from the New York Times can be found clicking here.  The material for you class that should be used before and after reading the article can be found by clicking here.

Poetry Foundation

On September 24 2013 I posted about Poetry Resources for Teens .  Here is another in the same line of Poetry Resources from

There are resources for students and teachers. To see the homepage click here.  On this website there is a Glossary of Terms for students to use, which can be found by clicking here.

They also have an Iphone and Android Poetry app that can be found by clicking here.