The Power of Poetry
MAGGIE HSIN-YING HUANG
12/18/2012
Roadmap
WHY should I teach poetry?
 Benefits
 Difficulties
HOW do I teach it?
 Poetic Devices
 Classroom Activities (Reading and Writing)
 Idea Sharing: Design a 50-minute lesson
Teaching Poetry?
Five-Line Poem: Poetry Lessons
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
On the first line write a noun of your choice.
On the second line write two adjectives joined
by and or but to describe this noun.
On the third line write a verb (use the simple
present or "-ing") and an adverb to describe this
noun.
Start the fourth line with like or as followed by
a comparison.
Start the final line with if only followed by a wish.
Five-Line Poem
Sea
By Kim Kyoung Tae
Monday Morning 7:00 a.m.
By Lee KyoungHuen
sea
silent and cruel
changing constantly
like a capricious woman
if only I could fall in love with her
Alarm!
Unconscious but conscious
Waking slowly
Like in a dream
If only today were a holiday
Benefits
 Provide a means of personal expression
 Authentic language input
 Concise yet content-rich reading material (easy to
expand)
 A model of creative language in use
 A way to introduce vocabulary in context
 A way to focus students’ attention on English
pronunciation, rhythm, and stress
Difficulties
 Sophisticated in language and content
 Metaphorical and highly allusive/elusive
 Broader view of “poem”= a piece of writing in
which the words are chosen for their beauty and
sound and are carefully arranged, often in short lines
which rhyme.
 Opens the doors to pop-songs, haiku, pattern poems,
picture poems, nursery rhymes and folk-songs.
The Star
By Ann Taylor, Jane Taylor
Roadmap
WHY should I teach poetry?
 Benefits
 Difficulties
HOW do I teach it?
 Poetic Devices
 Classroom Activities (Reading and Writing)
 Idea Sharing: Design a 50-minute lesson
Poetic Devices
https://sites.google.com/site/janeerieder/PoeticDevices.jpg
Rhyme 1
End Rhyme：尾韻
Full Rhyme
全韻
(結尾的母音和子音完全相同)
Half Rhyme
半韻
(結尾子音相同，但母音不同)
Vowel Rhyme
母音韻
(母音相同，但子音不同)
‧Eye/sky/high
‧all/ball/call
‧snow/know/below
‧chess/grass
‧hall/hell
‧ant/cent
‧like/light
‧rain/name
‧grape/make
I. Rhyming Pair Game
All the cards are place faced down and students/small groups take it in turns
to pick up two. If the two words rhyme, they keep the two cards. The position
of the cards must be kept as at the start to help the students remember where
the cards are.
http://www.esl-lounge.com/pronunciation/pronrhymingpairgame.php
Rhyme 2
II. Fill in the missing rhyme!
 Before listening
 After listening
Rhyme 3
 Online Rhyming Dictionary（押韻字典），輸入關鍵
字即可查詢按音節數歸類的同韻字
 http://www.rhymezone.com/
 http://www.rhymer.com/RhymingDictionary/time.h
tml
I see trees of green,
red roses too.
I see them bloom,
for me and you.
And I think to myself,
what a wonderful world.
skies is
of blue,
I see
Life
wonderful.
And clouds of white.
The bright blessed day,
The dark sacred night.
And I think to myself,
What a wonderful world.
The colors of the rainbow,
So pretty in the sky.
Are also on the faces,
Of people going by,
I see friends shaking hands.
Saying, "How do you do?"
They're really saying,
"I love you".
I hear babies cry,
I watch them grow,
They'll learn much more,
Than I'll ever know.
And I think to myself,
What a wonderful world.
Imagery 1
Imagery 2
 Auditory, visual, tasting, smelling, sensory
 A Mind Map
Summer
at the
beach
Imagery 2
 A Mind Map
Summer at the beach
sight
blue sky, blue ocean, white sand, tall green palm trees,
colorful swimsuits, bright sunshine...
hearing
music from the radio, the sound of the waves or the wind,
people shouting and laughing, a sizzling barbeque...
touch
smell
taste
hot soft sand, creamy suntan lotion, warm breeze...
the salty sea breeze, the smell of a barbeque, the fragrance of
suntan lotion...
salt water, pineapple juice, food on the grill...
Imagery 3
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
－Robert Frost (1874-1963)－
Metaphor 1
Metaphor 1
What are the metaphors?
Fill them in.
 Before listening
 After listening
Metaphor 2
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words, And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I’ve heard it in the chillest land, And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me.
－ Emily Dickinson －
Roadmap
WHY should I teach poetry?
 Benefits
 Difficulties
HOW do I teach it?
 Poetic Devices
 Classroom Activities (Reading and Writing)
 Idea Sharing: Design a 50-minute lesson
Classroom Activities 1
Warm-up
 Prediction task:
Show Ss pictures/ List key words and ask—what
might be the poem about?
 Present a unit question:
Prepare a question related to the theme of the poem.
Ask Ss in the beginning of the class but don’t rush
them to answer. Announce that it will be their goal of
the lesson. In the end of the lesson, ask Ss the same
question again.
Classroom Activities 2
Form-Focused
 Listing: Students make a list of words in a poem.
 Unscramble: Ss put the lines/stanzas into the
correct order. (T can read the poem first to offer
some clues.)
 Gap Fill –
 Fill in the words: rhymes / metaphors (T can play
the audio file of the poem first to offer some clues.)
 Missing sentences: Some sentences in the poem are
missing. Ss need to put them back.
Classroom Activities 3
Comprehension / Evaluation
 What does this line mean?
Match the explanations with the lines in the poem.
(Advanced level: Ask Ss to paraphrase the lines.)
 Discussion questions
 Drawing: Storyboard / Picture
 Drama (Role play)
Classroom Activities 4
Expansion
 Speaking Activities:
Ss take turns recite the poem (as a group or as a
class).
 Writing Activities:
- Ss expand the poem into a prose/story
- Ss write a letter to a character in the poem or to the
author
- A five-line poem based on a related topic
Classroom Activities
Listing: Students make a list of words in a poem
 A list of pronouns/verbs/concrete objects
 A list of synonyms/antonyms
 A list of words with the same idea
Classroom Activities
Matching Explanations:
Here are some useful websites that offer ready-to-use
explanations for poems.
 http://www.gale.cengage.com/free_resources/poets/
 http://www.shmoop.com/road-not-taken/
(with line-by-line, very detailed explanations)
Classroom Activities
A Five-Line Poem: English
English
English
Tough but interesting
Simple but complicated
Absorbing slowly
Change unpredictably
Like a growing puppy
Like a magic cube
If only I could grow up quickly
If only I could solve it
 Idea Sharing!
Design a 50-minute lesson and share with us.
The Road Not Taken: Resources
Audio Files
 http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15717
(Read by the poet)
 http://poetryoutloud.org/poems-and-performance/listento-poetry
(Clear pronunciation)
Animation
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llEf4B_EPQg
Worksheet
 http://tinyurl.com/dx3msdk