Introducing Poems
This is a set of strategies to help students of all ages get to know and appreciate individual poems.
As well as assisting students to make meaning from poems, the strategies help to develop
an understanding of style. They also offer support for students' own poetry writing.
Many of the strategies originally appeared in Approaches to Poetry,
published by The Department of Education and TATE.
Great Poems to Teach
Compiled by the Teachers & Writers Collaborative, this list contains 341 poems submitted by teachers who participated in a workshop organized by TWC. Selected for participation by C. K. Williams, teachers applying to the workshop were asked to supply a list of poems which they had successfully taught in high school English and Language Arts classrooms.
Welcome adventurers! You are about to "step into the poet's shoes." But, like Cinderella's glass slipper, only one shoe is right for you. To find the right fit, you will be trying on many different shoes--exploring a variety of poets and their poems to find a poet whose writing has special meaning for you. Once you have found your match, you will select a poem, slip into the poet's shoes, and perform your poem for the class.
free, online famous poetry resource providing the famous poems by the World's most popular Poets. Whether your search is for Classic or Modern poetry you will find the famous poems of your choice on the Famous Poetry Online web site. Whether your search is for Famous Love Poems or other famous types of poetry you will find all of the famous verses of your choice on this Online Poetry Website. Famous Love Poetry is the most popular type of verse and suitable for all romantics!
Experiencing the language of great poets provides a rich learning context for students, giving them access to the best examples of how words can be arranged in unique ways. By studying the works of renowned poets across cultures and histories, students extract knowledge about figurative language and poetic devices from masters of the craft. In this lesson, students learn about personification by reading and discussing poems by Emily Dickinson, William Blake, and Langston Hughes. Then they use the poems as a guide to brainstorm lists of nouns and verbs that they randomly arrange to create personification in their own poems.
Students compose found and parallel poems based on a descriptive passage they have chosen from a piece of literature they are reading. They pick out words, phrases and lines from the prose passage then arrange and format the excerpts to compose their own poems. This process of recasting the text they are reading in a different genre helps students become more insightful readers and develop creativity in thinking and writing.
"Lit2Go is a free online collection of stories and poems in Mp3 (audiobook) format. You can:
* Download the files to your Mp3 player and listen on the go,
* Listen to the Mp3 files on your computer,
* View the text on a webpage and read along as you listen,
* Print out the stories and poems to make your own book."
"Poem Generator
This makes random poems. First, it randomly selects sentence patterns. Then, wherever the pattern has a number, it randomly selects a word from one of the numbered word lists. You can either choose one of the sample sets of words and sentence patterns, or you can enter your own words and sentence patterns."
Three-Sentence Overview of this Lesson:
Inspired by both William Carlos Williams and the main character in Sharon Creech's Love That Dog, the writer will create four original 16-word poems that capture interesting images. The writer will then choose a favorite 16-word poem and ask, "Why would so much depend upon that image to someone else?" The writer can then create a short story about an original character who might have written the 16-word poem.
| 1. What is Poetry? | 2. Reading the Poem | 3. Denotation and Connotation | 4. Imagery | 5. Figurative Language 1: Metaphor, Personification, and Metonymy | 6. Figurative Language 2: Symbol and Allegory | 7. Figurative Language 3: Paradox, Overstatement, understatement, Irony and Allusion | 8. Tone and Musical Devices | 9. Rhythm and Meter | 10. Patterns of Traditional Poems | MLA Style Citation of this Web Page |
Welcome to Poetry 180. Poetry can and should be an important part of our daily lives. Poems can inspire and make us think about what it means to be a member of the human race. By just spending a few minutes reading a poem each day, new worlds can be revealed.
"Poets.org has partnered with TextTelevision to offer TextFlows, an alternative approach to reading and experiencing poetry. By converting text dynamically into Flash animation, poems are revealed phrase by phrase through motion and light, and at a pace controlled by the reader. The simplified words and crisp motion fixes one's attention on the subtleties of language, increasing involvement, engagement, and understanding"
Lyric Poetry Matrix
The following matrix lists information about the poems read. As you
view the matrix, look for common characteristics, relationships between characteristics, and
unique qualities that stand out.
"It was Monday again. It was Monday and the day was damp and cold. Rain splattered the cover of Algebra I as Laura heaved her books higher on her arm and sighed. School was such a bore.
School. It loomed before her now, massive and dark against the sky. In a few minutes, she would have to face them again---Diane Goddard with her sleek blond hair and Terri Pierce in her candy-pink sweater. And Carol and Steve and Bill and Nancy... There were so many of them, so exclusive as they stood in their tight little groups laughing and joking. Why were they so cold and unkind? Was it because her long stringy hair hung in her eyes instead of dipping in graceful curls? Was it because she wrote poetry in algebra class and got A's in Latin without really trying?
Shivering, Laura remembered how they would sit at the back of English class, passing notes and whispering. She thought of their identical brown loafers, their plastic purses, their hostile stares as they passed her in the corridors. She didn't care. They were clods, the whole lot of them. She shoved her way through the door and there they were. They thronged the hall,streamed in and out of doors, clustered under red and yellow posters advertising the latest dance. Mohair sweaters, madras shirts, pea-green raincoats. They were all alike, all the same. And in the center of the group, as usual, Diane Goddard was saying, "It'll be a riot! I just can't wait to see her face when she finds out."
Laura flushed painfully. Were they talking about her?
"What a scream! Can't wait to hear what she says!" Silently she hurried past and submerged herself in the stream of students heading for the lockers. It was then that she saw Rachel Horton---alone as always, her too-long skirt billowing over the white, heavy columns of her legs, her freckled face ringed withover the white, heavy columns of her legs, her freckled face ringed with shapeless black curls. She called herself Horton, but everyone knew her father was Jacob Hortensky, the