We will recognize how poetry can
be incorporated into any
classroom to enhance student
engagement and learning using
a poetry analysis activity and
writing exercises.
•
Choose five cards from the
stack at your table.
•
Use the five words to create a
line of poetry or short poem.
You can work alone or in
groups.
Teaching poetry is a dying art and it’s
a sad thing. I personally have made
it my mission at my school to get it
back into our curriculum wherever
possible. I believe it’s more suited to
our contemporary lifestyle than any
other genre and it’s a vital, but often
dismissed, part of our culture.

“Teaching kids to write is the most powerful way I feel I can affect their lives, and
I do it without preaching a single word. I need only help them generate and craft
poems, help them bring together their experience and imagination and language
on the page, and they feel indebted to me for life. I've seen writing help kids in
profound ways: good decisions on the page translate to good decisions in their
lives.” - DOUG GOETSCH

“I teach for the students who look to me and say, ‘You write?’ I teach for the need
in their eyes, the want to know there is some reason and satisfaction in doing
what tugs at their very souls for them to do. I teach also for the students who
take my class and say, ‘I can't write.’ I teach so I can show them that they are
wrong. I teach in order to hear a student write a new line and yell to the rest of
the class, "I've never heard that before in the history of the entire world!" I teach
poetry so that I can keep hearing new things in the world, and I teach poetry so
that I can make sure there are new things being made in this world.”
- RICHARD K. WEEMS

Poetry celebrates diversity

Poetry appeals to all ability levels
 Don’t believe me? I got proof.

Poetry is good for struggling readers, English
language learners and at-risk students.



Poetry is a good way to introduce or enrich
history lessons. There are poems written
about practically every major event in history.
Writing poetry is a useful tool in history–
persona poems
poems that come from a particular area are
also good for Geography/ World Studies…
Examples include the ghazal, pantoum,
haiku, sestina, villanelle, renga.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/article/178599

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2006/10/20/sc
ience-poem-of-the-week-1/

Scientists seem to like writing limericks and riddles. The
internet is full of math and science limericks… Like this guy
who has a whole science joke website

http://jcdverha.home.xs4all.nl/scijokes/poet.html
Flat- Sentences from the
Prefaces of Fourteen
Science Books

Poetry is now going to be part of the STAAR
tests and traditionally at DVHS English
teachers shy away from poetry. It’s not on
TAKS after all.

Guess what… the STAAR will force students
to be able to read and analyze poems. Gasp!

However, it can also be used as a tool to write
personal narrative, etc…

A Note Slipped Under the Door: Teaching
from the Poems We Love by Nick Flynn &
Shirley McPhillips

Fooling with Words by Bill Moyers

American Poetry Now: Pitt Poetry Series
Anthology by Ed Ochester

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/

http://www.poets.org/