Poetry Reflection
My Personal History with Poems
I would be lying if I said I've liked poems all my life and have had this profound connection with them. Maybe it is because the only time I have seen poems and have read them was when I was forced to read them in high school or on the End-of-Grade exams every year. I would always breathe a heavy sigh when flipping the page and seeing that the next passage I would have to read would be a poem. Sure, it is shorter, I would tell myself. But the complexity of understanding what it meant made me shutter when I saw them. The tipping point for me was when I thought I understood a poem by Robert Frost.
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Written by Robert Frost
Nature's first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
In my mind, this is a poem about nature. I love nature and spent a lot of time outside as a kid. I thought that this poem was speaking about the small sliver in time when everything is perfect. In autumn, there is a small window when all the leaves turn vibrant red and yellow colors. Of course, they soon begin to fall off the trees. I thought it was also talking about the small window when the sun is setting and the light hits the horizon just right where everything the light touches turns gold.
But then my high school teacher informed me that this poem was really speaking about children and how they're only young for a short period before they grow up and reach adulthood. It was upsetting to me to hear the truth. After all this time I had chosen the poem as my favorite as I thought I had a personal connection with the meaning behind it; finding out that all along I had been wrong about it.
It wasn't until I became a graduate student in college that I started to enjoy poems again. I found out my professors love poems and usually write them in their own past time to share with us. Being that I happen to adore and admire my professors, I listened as they read them aloud. They once wrote a poem about our class, sharing what space we were in, what we were doing, and what surrounded us at the time. It was about how we were separated in our unique spaces during the pandemic but still connected in a Zoom room while learning in our class.
I think that is the key to getting students to read poems, try them out, and begin to love them. When we, as teachers, have a great connection with our students and they see that we are interested in something, they are going to take note of it.
Every now and then, I'll try to write poetry but I don't try to delude myself into thinking that anything I write is grand. However, sometimes poetry is just enjoyable to write. It can be silly or more meaningful. The lines can be straightforward or moving in different directions. But the amazing part of writing poetry, or anything for that matter, is how powerful it feels to be in charge of what goes on your paper.
I still don't go out of my way to read poems or try to find ones I'll connect with. And being honest, I still have the slight fear of misreading them or interpreting them wrong. However, I believe it is incredibly important to supply students with many different genres of books that they can read to explore their interests. As stated before, children will take note of your interests if you have a great connection with them. However, that doesn't mean they will be interested in everything you're interested in. Every person and child is different and has different interests. Supplying them with books ranging in topics that they are interested in will allow them to find reading more enjoyable. Just like chapter books and picture books fill your classroom library, so should poem books.
Teaching Poetry
I can't speak to what others have experienced with poetry in schools. However, I can say that my own personal experience has been that I haven't had a lot of poetry instruction as a student in public schools. When I did have instruction on poetry, it seemed a standard objective that the teacher was checking off that year. It also seemed like something of the past that people wrote hundreds of years ago and something that definitely wasn't relevant today. Not to mention, all of the poetry that I was forced to read by my teachers was something far beyond my comprehension level at the time.
Why was that? Why did I think it was something of the past? Why was it above my comprehension level?
I am still trying to wrap my head around these questions that I ask myself now. It is important to understand the answers so I can go forth into my classroom not making the same mistakes. In my classroom, I aspire to teach poetry in a way that students grow to love it and don't have to ask themselves the questions that I'm asking myself now. I want students to see poetry as just another form of reading/writing that they can enjoy at their own leisure and not attach it to some high-stakes test like I had at their age. Maybe I saw it as something of the past because the poetry my teachers had me reading is the same poetry their teachers had them reading. Do you see the cycle that some of us create when we reuse the same material year after year that our teachers taught us and theirs before them? Our instructional materials start to become outdated and our students lose the meaning that it use to hold for us. It is easy to get stuck in the cycle but to be great educators, we have to constantly be updating our classroom library with relevant materials.
And as you can see below, I have listed the North Carolina State Standards that poetry is covered. There are many different standards in each grade (first to fifth) that cover poetry. This is important because this means poetry is still an active part of the North Carolina Language Arts curriculum (not a thing of the past) that you will have to teach in your class. Being so, you should learn ways that you can teach the poetry in a way that students will enjoy and learn to love it. Perhaps on the way, you will even grow fond of poetry yourself.
Instructional Guide: Awakening the Heart
This book helps educators teach poetry to students. It helps educators understand why poetry is so important to the classroom and the everyday individual. The author also gives guides to and instructional strategies to teaching poems to students. When I read the book by Georgia Heard, I came across her explaining what poetry can do for the individual. She explained that poems teach you life lessons; lessons that teach students about emotions they feel and how to express them in a way that no other form of writing can. The author's writing is absolutely beautiful. She has poetry entwined with her soul and that is only what I can imagine she means by "awakening the heart". The way she just describes regular everyday things makes me feel so connected. "The tree's branches and leaves touch the windows so in the summer I feel like I live not in an apartment in the city but in a treehouse." Her beautiful writing is felt deeply by the reader and she helps them nurture their own poet's heart because as she sees it, their is poetry in all of us. As I'm reading this and connecting with what the author is saying, how we must learn to listen deeply, and how poetry is the words that feel true, I begin to remember something that I wrote in high school. Searching through documents on my computer I finally find it.
I went through a very emotional time in my life where everything was dark. I began to take walks outside just to get out of my house, just to escape for a little while. The more I went on these walks the more I began to notice the world around me. This was also a period of my life that I wrote down everything. It was my way of coping with things and a form of stress-reliever. So it wasn't long before I started to write down the things I noticed outside. One day, the rain was pouring outside and a storm had engulfed my neighborhood. Here is what I wrote about it.
The Color of the Clouds - October 13, 2015
The monstrous roar of the rain hitting the ground. It is so loud that if you spoke, no sound would escape your lips. None that you could hear.
Even through the dark stormy clouds and rain covering the air, the sun peaks out in the sky and sets a golden glow on the atmosphere. Winds so powerful, they shake the sturdiest trees. And the almighty lightning crackles so close to you that you can feel the force of it hitting the ground. As I watch the soft sun disappear behind the omniscient clouds, the rain begins to lighten. Not so much so that it would be considered a drizzle, but just not quite as hard as it was before.
The mighty roars of the thunder sound like the red oak tree snapping in half and falling to the ground below. The streets are now completely covered with rain. It leaves no inch for my feet to stay dry.
The rain leaves the roads and drains into the grass, feeding the earth and making it the most beautiful shade of green.
The sun is still setting. And the golden glow is dulling. The clouds right above it have the most heaven-like appearance. Not quite white. But almost a cream color.
I can still make out the sun. Just a tad. It’s now disappearing behind the trees and as it goes, so does the rain. The thundering beat of the rain turns to a lulling rhythm of the platters of it falling to the ground.
The air smells freshly of it. Of the sweet acidic scent. The drops that come down are the cleanest and purest of any freshwater found on this magnificent planet. This is a sight no high pixel lens can quite capture. And it never should.
In the distance, there is a sight that Picasso nor Da Vinci themselves cannot paint. For no artist could strew the colors so perfectly together such as that. Mixed in with the soft blue color of the darkened storm clouds, shades a new hue. Pink. No! Purple. Going from dark to light, to dark once again. Blue. Grey. White. Gold. Pink. Purple. The colors of the entire spectrum sit in the sky for those brave enough to peek into it.
All the signs of the storm are almost gone. Left remaining is the sharp crackle of lightning beyond the trees and the soft whispers of the thunder.
Most clouds have vanished by now. But then I caught a glimpse of the lonely grey figure that was making it’s way across the sky. Droning on far behind it’s companions. It signals the end of the storm and with that, the earth takes on a new color, reflected that of it’s sky. Now shading with a blue of the night sky setting in.
And with that, I must go in.
Strategies for Teaching Poetry
· Poem read-alouds just like it is any other book we read aloud in class
· Having poem books in classroom library for students to read (in a variety of topics)
· Be apart of writing relevant poetry about your classroom with your students, make them apart of the process, and be the model for them
· Explain to students that "What We Say Is Poetry" (Heard, 1999, pg. 3); what they feel and notice in the world is poetry yet to become
· let students "treasure hunt" for poetic lines in books they've already read "What We Say Is Poetry" (Heard, 1999, pg. 8)
· Use word scrambles to form short poems (Heard, 1999, pg. 10)
Great Poem Books for Your Classroom Library
NC State Standards and Objectives
Grade 1
RL.1.4 - Identify words and phrases in stories or poems that suggest feelings or appeal to the senses.
Grade 2
RL.2.4 - Describe how words and phrases supply rhythm and meaning in a story, poem, or song.
SL.2.5 - Create audio recordings of stories or poems; add drawings or other visual displays to stories or recounts of experiences when appropriate to clarify ideas, thoughts, and feelings.
Grade 3
RL.3.5 - Refer to parts of stories, dramas, and poems when writing or speaking about a text, using terms such as chapter, scene, and stanza; describe how each successive part builds on earlier sections.
RF.3.5 - Read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.
a. Read on-level text with purpose and understanding.
b. Read on-level prose and poetry orally with accuracy, appropriate rate, and expression on successive readings.
c. Use context to confirm or self-correct word recognition and understanding, rereading as necessary.
SL.3.5 - Create engaging audio recordings of stories or poems that demonstrate fluid reading at an understandable pace; add visual displays when appropriate to emphasize or enhance certain facts or details.
Grade 4
RL.4.2 - Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text; summarize the text.
RL.4.5 - Explain major differences between poems, drama, and prose, and refer to the structural elements of poems and drama when writing or speaking about a text.
RF.4.5 - Read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension. a. Read on-level text with purpose and understanding. b. Read on-level prose and poetry orally with accuracy, appropriate rate, and expression on successive readings. c. Use context to confirm or self-correct word recognition and understanding, rereading as necessary.
Grade 5
RL.5.2 - Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text, including how characters in a story or drama respond to challenges or how the speaker in a poem reflects upon a topic; summarize the text.
RL.5.5 - Explain how chapters, scenes, or stanzas provide the overall structure of a particular story, drama, or poem.
RF.5.4 - Read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.
a. Read on-level text with purpose and understanding.
b. Read on-level prose and poetry orally with accuracy, appropriate rate, and expression on successive readings.
c. Use context to confirm or self-correct word recognition and understanding, rereading as necessary.
L.5.3 - Use knowledge of language and its conventions when writing, speaking, reading, or listening.
a. Expand, combine, and reduce sentences for meaning, reader/listener interest, and style.
b. Compare and contrast the varieties of English used in stories, dramas, or poems
References
Alexander, K., (2014). The Crossover. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing.
Alexander, K., & Holmes, E., (2017). Out of Wonder: Poems Celebrating Poets. Candlewick Press.
Heard, G., (1999). Awakening the Heart: Exploring Poetry in Elementary and Middle School. Heinemann Publisher.
Janeczko, P. B., & Sweet, M., (2014). Firefly July: A Year of Very Short Poems. Candlewick Press.
Paul, M., & Myles, M., (2019). Thanku: Poems of Gratitude. Millbrook Press.
VanDerwater, A. L., & Gourley, R., (2013). Forest Has A Song. Carlton Books.
Worth, V., & Babbitt, N., (1996). All the Small Poems and Fourteen More. Square Fish Publisher.
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