Teaching Poetry

Christensen brought up Great poetry exercizes and there were three that I particularly liked and would probably teach. The first was connecting poetry to literature. This exercize seems like a nice change from the typical literature analysis paper. It was great to get them to view one character and then share their ideas with the class to get a wide range of input. In my classes, discussion always seemed to go better when students had written something that made them think about what to say in class. It's often hard to come up with something on the spot, but writing lets you think and record so you will remember what you wanted to say. Poetry exercizes like this accomplish more than one task at once, preparing to discuss literature and then practice creative writing and thinking through others' eyes.

The other activity that I liked because I am a history minor, is using poetry to humanize history. I think that activities like this that get the student to put their mind into history would help them actually remember history better.

I also really liked the Remember me poems. I hope that I can incorperate this somehow into my pre-internship this semester. I would love to have my seventh grade students do something like this that we could make and it would be something for me to remember my experience and the unique set of students that I am getting to know. My experience at this school has been nothing like what I have grown up with, and it is and will be a great learning period for me. I think having the students think positively about eachother and themselves is also important for students at this age because of the growth period that they are going through. They need the support.