Poetry in the K-12 Classroom

So, you’re a K-12 English teacher. No matter what grade level you are currently teaching, chances are you’ve run into the issue of poetry. Ah, good old poetry. You have to teach it, but how? Common Core State Standards are woefully vague on how or what parts of poetry should be taught. Do you cover the basic vocabulary or delve deeper into varying interpretations, do you teach students to write poetry or just to read it, are classes taught in lecture formats or should they be discussion-based? Much of this is left up to individual teachers, such as yourself.

Don’t let this scare you away from incorporating poetry regularly into your lesson plans. Teaching poetry to younger students exposes them early on to the powerful descriptive and emotional capacity of language. Poems can be less intimidating than long, compact chunks of text, but no less capable of being a handy learning tool. Older students might be more ready for some deeper analysis and finding multiple, coexisting meanings in a poem. Sharing insights as a group can even bring a class closer together through the exploration of meaning.

Junior high and high school language arts teacher Tamara L. C. Van Wyhe found it helpful to do “a quick reading and discussion of a complete piece of text as a way to begin a class period.”¹ Because poems are generally brief, they can be easily incorporated into the limited class time you have and are a great way to warm up your students’ analytical thought processes.

You might still be concerned that “teaching to the test” takes up too much time to allow regular poetry lessons that go sufficiently in depth. Self-described English teacher-in-training Sejjad Alkhalby divulges that “the seeming directionlessness [sic] of poetry lessons comes from a tension between poetry’s ‘fuzziness’ and the definitive qualities that the factory model necessitates.”² But allowing students to muddle through that fuzziness toward tangible meaning sets up the same analytical and comprehension skills that will allow them to succeed even in standardized tests. As the saying goes, after all, art makes you smart! If you’re still struggling to get started, take a look at this sample lesson plan I created that you can modify for use in your own classroom.

These days, many students are emerging from their K-12 education with little or no appreciation for poetry. It’s no surprise, with the constraints to which educators are subjected, but we can’t overlook the impact poetry could be having on students, both in the classroom and in their day-to-day lives. Besides, what is the downside to providing troubled tweens and teens a healthy outlet for their emotions? It is up to you to, at the very least, pull back the curtain a bit to show just how enthralling poetry can really be.

 

References

2. Alkhalby, Sejjad. “Why Teach Poetry?” The Michigan Daily, 9 Sept. 2020, 4:27, michigandaily.com/section/arts/why-teach-poetry.

1. Van Wyhe, Tamara L. C. “Remembering What Is Important: The Power of Poetry in My Classroom.” English Journal, vol. 96, no. 1, Sept. 2006, pp. 15–16. ProQuest, https://login.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/docview/237306528?accountid=4840.