(2) Encourage students to read poetry aloud to themselves and to each other.
(3) Use choral reading of poetry in your classroom. It’s a technique which adds to children’s enjoyment of poetry by directly involving them.
Once students gain the confidence in writing their own poetry, the teacher can introduce adult poems into the classroom. The teacher can make this transition knowing that students already know what it’s like to write poetry. Students will have enough experience to make them feel like poets and feel close to poetry; this should help them in reading and understanding what other poets have written. The purpose of teaching poetry to students is to experience what so many other people have found in poetry, not just so you will know more, or understand more, but so you will enjoy more. Surely one of the major purposes of education is to increase people’s capacity to enjoy life.
H. TEACHING READING THROUGH POETRY & HOW TO READ IT
ø How to get started
Before teaching poetry to the classroom, the first step that must be done is preparing a pocket folder for each student labeled “Poetry” and preparing copies of two poems. On the first meeting, begin this activity by reading a poem to the students. Then pass out a copy of the poem to each student and reread it to the students as they follow along. Then read the poem together chorally. Poetry lends itself to choral reading because of its rhythm. Follow the same procedure with the second poem.
On the next session, reread the poems chorally. Use the poems to do some word study activities. You might have the students search for rhyming words, or synonyms of words you give them. On the third meeting, a teacher might introduce another new poem by reading it to them, passing out the poem, reading it again, and then have the students read it chorally. Then read the old poems.
By the third meeting the students usually will have become fluent reading the old poems. So if the poem contains conversational parts (and try to pick many poems that have this feature) assign an individual student to read a character’s part. The remainder of the class chorally reads any parts that would be considered narration. The students will enjoy the opportunity to read the individual parts. They have to be really alert and tracking to come in at the proper place.
On the next day, teacher could introduce a new poem by reading it to the class. We try to do this with lots of expression to give the students some idea of the possibilities of the poem. We may want to pick poems that go with the subject matter we are studying or the season of the year. Pass out the poem and have the students follow along as we reread it to them. Ask students to read the poem chorally. In this case, a teacher might be as a leader to keep the class together.
If there is new vocabulary in the poem that is crucial to comprehension, discuss it the first day the poem is introduced. As poems become old poems, use them to work on word skills. These can be done orally, or as pencil and paper activities. Allow students to read individual character parts during the group choral reading.
Read old poems as mini-Reader Theater scripts. This should be done after the students are very familiar with the poem. A student is assigned to each of the character/narrator parts or to a particular stanza of the poem. The group of students presents the poem at the front of the classroom. If we have too many poems to read them all at once, have the students take turns picking an old favorite to read. This can go on as long as we need.
øUsing poems to practice skills
