Creating+a+Welcoming+Atmosphere+for+Poetry

How might you create a welcoming atmosphere for poetry?
Click the **Edit** button (far right side of screen) and paste your content in the space below. Make sure to **Save** changes before exiting. Added by Audrey Alenson: Poetry can be short or long; it can have a highly structured form or seem to have little to no form at all. It’s difficult to define; not everyone shares the same opinion about what poetry is and what it’s not, and this can make it both difficult and liberating for the poetry teacher. It makes sense too that children’s responses to poetry are different and that they tend to change with age. What satisfies a pre-school child will likely be different than the poems a middle school child might enjoy. Poetry is anything but “one-size-fits-all”.

Young children delight in the rich sounds and rhythms of poetry and verse. Rhymes, parallel structures and alliteration will permit them to predict and participate in the poem’s unfolding. Also, short, memorable works will allow young children to experience a kind of ownership when they realize they’ve come to know a poem “by heart”. Though knowing some of the elements of poetry will give students points of access, focusing too much on structure or overemphasizing the analytics of a work will steal from the overall enjoyment and a child’s natural inclination toward music.

Poetry can be evocative and emotional or leave the listener full of wonder. Middle school children developing a sense of themselves in the bigger world may benefit from poetry that confides or reveals. They may personally connect with the voice of some contemporary poets who express internal struggle or a fight against social oppression. Novels in verse, like //Love that Dog// by Sharon Creech or //Out of the Dust// by Karen Hesse can offer poetry in a more familiar package to some students.

No matter the age of the child, it’s important to emphasize that poetry is to be enjoyed. It can be humorous and silly, stinging or wry, serious, stately, doleful or angry. It can be nonsense with a multitude of meanings. No moods, themes or styles need be prescribed, which means there is so much more to be explored. Some ideas for extending the enjoyment of poetry with children of all ages are: Sources Codell, Esme Raji. //How to Get Your Child to Love Reading//. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2003. Morgan, Mia. //Poetry// PowerPoint for LBS 803 (Fall 2009). Temple, Charles, et al. //Children’s Books in Children’s Hands//, 3rd ed. Boston: Pearson, 2006.
 * Take poetry breaks, a concept promoted by Caroline Fetter Bauer. These short poetry interruptions provide for a quick, effective passage out of the mundane.
 * Hold a poetry party and invite the literary illuminati of the age, like: Mother Goose, Hilaire Belloc, Ogden Nash, Emily Dickinson, Lewis Carroll and “Anonymous”.
 * Perform poetry. Children can memorize poems to recite individually, or come together as a group for a “choral speaking”.
 * Collect poems. Have children create their own anthologies. “Explore choice and order. Do I want to alternate long and short poems?” (Codell, p. 292) How could illustrations complement the page?
 * Write poetry. Have students react to the things around them: books, nature, a moment at lunch, a predicament. As students begin to write their own poems, they will also more closely connect with the poets they read.