Poetry for all

When introducing poetry, I often hear the moans of discontent. Why?

Poetry carries some kind of stigma of being "useless" and "not important" and "difficult"

Well... yes... I guess for some those are true. But my goal when teaching poetry is to make it none of those things.

A starter to poetry that I used last year while teaching Grade 9s was to let them go through poetry anthologies, or online, and find 5 poems they liked and answer a few questions about why they liked them. This helped put poetry control back in their hands.

Another way to introduce poetry is by playing a song or letting them choose a song and bringin song lyrics. Most are surprised at how many literary devices are used in songs.

My teacher friend who I taught with last year used "My heart's a stereo" as

Here are some links to sites with poetry lesson plans for all ages:
http://www.favoritepoem.org/lessonPlans.html

http://home.cogeco.ca/~rayser3/poetry.htm

http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/composing-cinquain-poems-quick-51.html

http://www.educationworld.com/a_special/poetrymonth.shtml

www.teachingliterature.org/.../pdf/poetry/poetry_deshotels.pdf (Grade 10 unit but adaptable)

Last year I did this post with some poetry ideas for TTOCs and classroom teachers.