11-10-2013, 08:25 PM
Leanne, I think so many have offered some really good ideas already.
If I can add anything, and if it's possible within the lecture format, it would be this:
1. Take whatever pains are necessary to teach the concept of an image as the fundamental building block of poetry
(you CAN teach this to "remedial" students, and in 15 minutes or less. It all depends on how you engage them).
2. Make all of the kids compose a short free-verse poem, perhaps on a goofy/funny/culturally relevant theme. Require them to use two or three images at least.
(You might even suggest a few different themes, and have the kids pick between them, or ask them to come up with them.)
3. Invite a workable number of them to share their work aloud, and have it workshopped. This measure can be implemented as simply as this: Ask the students to respond to each other's poems, not in terms of whether they "liked it or not," but what it made them think or feel, and what it seemed to mean.
4. Refer them to some resource that will keep them engaged as readers and writers. (If you send them to the forum, we can help you to build an army of future poets
)
I realize this is ambitious, and that you didn't ask for a lesson plan. Even so, I'm just thinking about how that might be done within your time constraints in this instance, to get the students jazzed about poetry. For me, poetry never really clicked as something worth reading until I began to engage in writing it. Getting disenfranchised students to write and share their writing, I think, is an excellent way to get them to fall in love with poetry, and literature more generally speaking.
Hope that's not too preachy.
- James
If I can add anything, and if it's possible within the lecture format, it would be this:
1. Take whatever pains are necessary to teach the concept of an image as the fundamental building block of poetry
(you CAN teach this to "remedial" students, and in 15 minutes or less. It all depends on how you engage them).
2. Make all of the kids compose a short free-verse poem, perhaps on a goofy/funny/culturally relevant theme. Require them to use two or three images at least.
(You might even suggest a few different themes, and have the kids pick between them, or ask them to come up with them.)
3. Invite a workable number of them to share their work aloud, and have it workshopped. This measure can be implemented as simply as this: Ask the students to respond to each other's poems, not in terms of whether they "liked it or not," but what it made them think or feel, and what it seemed to mean.
4. Refer them to some resource that will keep them engaged as readers and writers. (If you send them to the forum, we can help you to build an army of future poets
) I realize this is ambitious, and that you didn't ask for a lesson plan. Even so, I'm just thinking about how that might be done within your time constraints in this instance, to get the students jazzed about poetry. For me, poetry never really clicked as something worth reading until I began to engage in writing it. Getting disenfranchised students to write and share their writing, I think, is an excellent way to get them to fall in love with poetry, and literature more generally speaking.
Hope that's not too preachy.
- James
“Poetry is mother-tongue of the human race; as gardening is older than agriculture; painting than writing; song than declamation; parables,—than deductions; barter,—than trade”
― Johann Hamann
― Johann Hamann