In 4 Essential Studies, Kelly Gallagher and Penny Kittle identify six practices most important in teaching poetry. The following is an adapted excerpt.
We begin with play, we have students contribute to poetry discussions in a variety of ways, we have students write poems, we teach the language of poetry, we ask students to immerse themselves in poetry study, and we require our students to publicly share poems.
Regardless of the activities we choose, we stress the importance of memorization. Penny will never forget the time she and Kelly raced from gate to gate in an airport while Kelly recited soliloquies from Romeo and Juliet. Tom Newkirk said memorization “allows language to be written on the mind. . . . It is the act of owning a language, making it literally a part of our bodies, to be called upon decades later when it fits a situation” (2012, 76–77). We like the idea of having poems written on our minds. For the last ten years, Penny has recited “Days,” by Billy Collins, to introduce quickwriting in class. We invite students to memorize poems, so that they can carry them with them for the rest of their lives.
Practice 1: We play with language
Our first goal is to lower our students’ anxiety about poetry. To do this, we begin with wordplay. Specifically, we encourage our students to play with the words of other writers. This practice eases them into poetry. Here are six of our favorite wordplay activities.
- Spine poems
- Found poems
- Blackout poems
- Lyric mash-up poems
- Crowd-sourced poetry
- Favorite lines
Practice 2: We teach students to contribute to poetry discussions
Poems are great launchpads for all kinds of interesting thinking. To give students a sense of possibilities, we begin with an activity we learned from Sheridan Blau (2019), English professor at Columbia University. We ask students to study George Bogin’s poem “Nineteen.” After several oral readings of the poem, we write for ten minutes. During this quickwrite, students are asked “to contribute to a discussion about this poem.” That’s it. After students have written, we have them read their drafts to one another in small groups, and then we ask for volunteers to read to the entire class. While they are reading these drafts out loud, we chart the various approaches they took in the quickwrites. The last time we did this, some students
- wrote commentaries;
- responded to a line, word, or phrase in the poem;
- shared personal connections or stories;
- commented on the voice of the poem;
- analyzed other writerly moves;
- asked questions of the poet;
- analyzed the structure of the poem;
- wrestled with confusion in the poem;
- suggested the big idea through textual evidence; or
- made connections to other works of art.
Practice 3: We lead students to write poems
If teachers are going to guide students through the reading and writing of poetry, teachers must read and write poetry.
Yes, write poetry.
Don’t close the book. Stay with us.
This call to write poetry may be a large hurdle for you. We know this because it was a large hurdle for us. We taught poetry for years without taking the crucial step of actually writing poems alongside our students. Yes, we were faithful in opening up our notebooks and writing narratives, arguments, and informational drafts alongside them, but when it came to poetry, we let our uneasiness with the genre get in our way. We both have advanced degrees, and we are published writers, yet when it comes to thinking about drafting poems in front of our students, we still get a bit squeamish. If we ever dabble with creating poems, we mostly do this in private, far away from displaying them on the document cameras in our classrooms.
We now know this was the wrong approach. Think of it in these terms: Imagine taking a class in filmmaking and finding out your instructor rarely watched films. Worse, he’d never made one. That would be unacceptable. This metaphor reminded us that when it came to the teaching of poetry, we had become the film teacher who never made films. If we want poetry to become contagious in our classrooms, we have to show students how we—their teachers—capture places of real love to write poems about.
Practice 4: We teach the language of poetry
Like teaching, the field of poetry has its own language, and to help our students acquire this lexicon, we provide them with the glossary of poetry terms found in Nancie Atwell and Anne Atwell Merkel’s The Reading Zone (2016). Students analyze poems with more precision and confidence when they know the difference between an end-stopped and an enjambed line.
When deciding on a winning poem, students must consider the technical skill (What are the moves and techniques employed by the poet?) and the affective elements (Does the poem touch your brain or your heart?). These two questions are related: if a poem moves you, it is because the poet has done something, and having numerous discussions around the “winning elements” of poems helps our students to acquire the academic language of poetry.
Practice 5: We ask students to immerse themselves in poetry study
The poetry tournament is one springboard to sharpen analytical skills. We have also used the following activities to encourage close study:
- Poetry huddles. In small groups, students tape a poem to butcher paper. At each table in the room is a different poem, all by the same poet or within a theme. Students huddle around a poem, reading, analyzing, and annotating it. After a few minutes, each group shifts one table over and adds thinking to the poster the next group has left behind.
- Poet of the day. Over the course of a week, we feature a different poet each day as our book talk.
- Favorite five. Ask students to collect five exemplary poems from one poet.
- Thematic study. Students select poems around a theme or big idea. In writing and in discussion, students explain why the poems they've chosen are important.
- Pairing poems. We give students two poems and ask, "Why did we pair these poems?" These pairings can be thematic, or they can be based on technical skill, or they can be both.
- Poetry autobiography. Ask students to find poems that define them.
- Poetry match. Ask students to match a poem with a person who should read it.
- Poetry collection. Have students create an anthology of poems.
Practice 6: We ask all students to publicly share poems
There are a variety of ways in which we ask students to share their poems with the class. Following are our favorites.
- End-of-class share. Students simply read great poems aloud.
- Choral reading. Design multivoice poems, or choose your hot spot(s).
- In-class performance. Students stand up and perform poems live in front of their peers and ask students to consider the moves of a good performance.
- Short film.
- Public poetry jams. Some of our most engaged and adventuresome students have shared their poems at open mic nights in local clubs and coffeehouses.
For the detailed list and descriptions, see Chapter 3 of the book.
