Engaging Junior Secondary Students With Poetry
Engage Phase:
Outcomes from teaching poetry:
-
Understand the connection between words and rhythm
Focus on quality writing
Develop use of detail in writing
Use of similes and metaphors
Critical reading/comprehension skills
What is poetry?
1. A good activity to start with is to see what students already know about
poetry – or what they think is poetry. One way of doing this is to give students
10-15 short pieces of writing – a mix of different types of poems and some prose.
Ask your students to sort these into what they think are poems and what aren’t.
Ask them to explain their choices. Students can then re-group the pile of poems
into three groups according to what they see as different types of poems.
How is poetry relevant?
1. All students will be music fans of some variety – but most won’t readily
associate poetry with music. Of course, there are strong connections
between poetry and music. Ask students to write down 10 lyrics (10 lines
from at least 3 different songs) that they can best remember and most
like. Ask them to think about why these words are particularly
memorable? Is it the words themselves or the tune that goes with them?
2. Music and poetry, of course, have long been used to recognise significant
occasions in life. You might like to show students some clips showing the
following:
-
Poetry to commemorate important occasions – Anzac Day
Poetry to commemorate death – Four Weddings and a Funeral
Poetry to represent our feelings – Ten Things I hate about You
Poetry to celebrate our spirit – Invictus / Dead Poet’s Society
Explore Phase:
The following activities allow students to be creative and have fun exploring and
creating different types of poems:
1. The ABC has Poetry ‘splatt’ on its website. It’s an online form of the fridge
magnetic game which features a large group of short and interesting words that
you can arrange into any poem you want and save. This is the link:
http://www.abc.net.au/splatt/games/poetry/default.htm
2. Put together a cut up poem: In this activity, you take a short-to-midlength poem (some good examples are in the resource package), cut it up
into individual words, and challenge students to put it together again, and
tell you what the poem is about. Students then compare their puttogether poem with the actual poem.
3. Stupid love poem: All students will be familiar with Valentines Day poetry
and ‘Rose are red…’ This activity invites students to poke fun at that type
of poetry. The rules are that students must write a 4-6 line poem. It must
rhyme, and it must include at least 4 of these words: Moon, love, sun, star,
rose, beautiful, heaven, angel.
4. Riddle poetry: Riddle poems are a fun way of introducing poetry and
many of the features of poetry to students. Sylvia Plath’s ‘Mushrooms’ is a
great example of a literary riddle poem (don’t show students the title),
which has great techniques of onomatopoeia, alliteration and line breaks.
The Read, Write & Think website has some good lesson plan resources for
this activity: http://www.readwritethink.org/classroomresources/lesson-plans/what-teaching-poetry-through-169.html
Explain Phase:
In this phase of the poetry unit we want students to understand some important
techniques used in poetry and terms used to discuss poetry:
- Similes
- Metaphors
- Alliteration
- Onomatopoeia
- Rhyme scheme
- Syllables
- Line Break
Giving students a chance to explore each of these aspects of poetry, see examples
of them, find their own examples and explain the concepts back to your in their
own words are strategies that will allow students to engage most with learning
these aspects of poetry.
Similes & metaphors: Similes and metaphors are not just important in poetry but
prose as well. To practice using similes and metaphors you can get students to
list their three favourite objects. They then need to go through a newspaper and
pick out 10 interesting words/pictures. They then need to match their three
objects to three of the words/pictures and create a simile or metaphor. Students
can also explore similes or metaphors by writing ‘I am…poems’. ‘I am…’ poems
are also excellent for teaching rhythm. They should have four lines (each with 34 syllables) and have an A,B,A,B rhyme scheme:
I am a car,
Zooming, racing
Driving far
Twisting, chasing
Onomatopoeia: There is no better example of onomatopoeia than the
Jabberwocky. Students always enjoy this poem and the challenge of figuring out
what the nonsense words mean. To show their understanding of onomatopoeia
you can challenge students to write ‘I am…’ poems with onomatopoeic words.
They can also create their own new onomatopoeic words.
Explaining line breaks: The Read, Write and Think website has a simple but
effective visual explanation of lines breaks.
http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/studentinteractives/line-break-explorer-30018.html
Syllables: Haiku poems are an excellent way for introducing and experimenting
with syllables in poetry. The Scholastic website has a good explanation of Haikus
and students can experiment with writing their own on the site:
http://teacher.scholastic.com/writewit/poetry/poetry_engine.htm#
Elaborate Phase:
The following strategies are good for getting students to develop and extend
their poetry writing.
1. Metaphor poetry: Students can have a lot of fun writing with metaphors. ‘I
am…’ poems are a good introduction to this. However, students can
extend their understanding of metaphor poetry by picking a feeling,
experience or object and comparing it to something (see metaphor chart
attached) and then completing a Looks Like, Feels Like, Sounds Like Y
Chart to develop the details of their writing. The Anger poem attached in
the resources is a good example of an extended metaphor poem.
2. Post it note poetry: A great way of brainstorming and putting together a
poem is to use post-it-notes. Initially using a Y Chart, students brainstorm
words to use in their poem on post-it-notes. They can then begin to form
the words into a poem by moving them around their table.
3. Onomatopoeia poetry: Onomatopoeic words can really add interest and
spark to a poem. Children’s books written in verse often use these – The
Three Little Ghosties. Is a good example of this. Students can experiment
with writing their own onomatopoeic poetry on the topics of ‘On the way
home…’ or ‘At lunchtime…’ or ‘At the canteen…’ In groups they can
brainstorm nouns and verbs that they associate with these topics. They
then need to change each of these nouns and verbs into their own twisted
onomatopoeic word like in the Jabberwocky.
4. Found & Borrowed word poems: This activity is good to help students
modify existing drafts of poems they have done or to inspire new ones.
‘Found’ words are words which students find when they flick through a
newspaper or magazine. You give them a time limit and a goal for finding
as many interesting words at the end of that time. At the end, they can
take those words and create a new poem from them, or insert them into
an existing draft of a poem they have. ‘Borrowed’ word poems invites
students to look around the room and identify ten objects. They need to
name the objects and give an adjective to describe each of them. They
then need to use their thesaurus to come up with more interesting names
and adjectives for each object. They write these on a post-it-note and stick
it on the objects. Students then need to ‘borrow’ at least five words that
other students came up with to create a new poem starting with: ‘The
classroom is…’ Students can also do this brainstorming activity on any
topic, such as ‘The Canteen’ – simply by pooling their post it notes on the
whiteboard where other students can ‘borrow’ them from.
5. Poetry Mash-Up: ‘Mash-Up’ is a new genre that is emerging in Literature,
where classic stories are taken and mash-up with pulp genre elements.
‘Pride and Prejudice and Sea Monsters’ is a recent example, as is ‘Little
Vampire Women.’ Wordworth’s ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’ is a good
poem to use. Students need to take words such as: Vampire, Werewolf,
Zombie, Braineaters, Apocalypse, Killer piranhas, Doom (they can
generate their own pulp list) and insert as many as they can into a poem
and still have it make sense.
Evaluate Stage:
Students’ understand of poetry can be evaluated in a number of interesting and
creative ways.
Creative Writing:


Put together a folio of their best 3-5 poems. Type these poems up in
Powerpoint or Photostory and record themselves reading the poems to
show their understanding of rhythm in the poems.
Children’s books: Children’s books are often written in verse (Doctor
Zeuss is a great example of this) which use many poetic techniques –
particularly rhyme, similes and onomatopoeia. Students can choose to
write a children’s book in verse as a way of demonstrating their
understanding of poetry.
Text Response:

Students can be very engaged in exploring the lyrics to music they like. As
a way of showing their understanding of poetic techniques, you can ask
students you can ask students to find examples of three different songs
that: use rhyme, similes or metaphors, or alliteration. They need to locate
examples of these in the song and explain how they help make the song
interesting and enjoyable.