Poetry

Reading Poetry

The 2007 Ofsted report on poetry teaching (drawn from school inspection evidence) observes that Primary school teachers in some of the schools visited were said to 'not know enough about poetry' and that the range of poems used in primary classrooms was limited, sometimes just to humorous poems and/or texts lacking sufficient challenge or acknowledgement of children's life experiences. Andrew Stibbs says that teachers 'do no more than catalogue a mortuary if they do not themselves read and enjoy poetry' (Stibbs, 1981: 45). It will be vital to ensure that your student teachers (of every age group) are broadening their diet of poetry so that they can move beyond the familiar to make new choices and interesting selections of poems by form, theme, historical period or whatever criteria are relevant. How could you help this to happen?

Poem selection

You could ask your student teachers to bring in newly discovered (rather than previously studied) single poems or song lyrics on a particular theme to share with the rest of the group. (Childhood, Games or Identity have been good topics for some groups I have taught.) They should prepare a reading of their chosen poem and a short explanation of why they have chosen it. You might want to begin this activity by giving the student teachers a small selection of poems or images as stimulus or as core texts to build from. Poems about childhood that I have used effectively with primary and secondary student teachers include: 'Attention Seeking' by Jackie Kay; 'You Can't Be That' by Brian Patten; 'Make Me' by Tania Colley; 'A Boy's Head' by Miroslav Holub and 'Children's Song' by R. S. Thomas.

Once you have a group collection of texts you could ask your student teachers to:

• refine the selection down to x number of poems
• select a poem they think might be suitable for use in a particular year group/ability range
• pair poems up which might be suitable for comparison
• rank them in order of perceived difficulty
• group them according to use of form
• explore potential similarities and differences between poems and song lyrics
• begin to generate a bank of images, music, weblinks and other resources to use alongside the poems

This activity will not only broaden their experience of poetry but will also engage them in discussion about differentiation, language, structure, and encourage them to work collaboratively. You could go on to introduce the idea of anthology making. (For advice on anthology construction refer to Dymoke 2003 and ideas at http://www.poetryclass.net/.)

What other reading activities could you use with student teachers?

Asking questions of a poem (A small group activity using a short, pre 20^th poem pasted on to A3 or sugar paper.)

1. What questions would your student teachers want to ask about the poem in front of them before they would feel comfortable about teaching it? Ask them to write these down in one coloured pen only around the poem.
2. Now pass the poem on. The next group should write (in a different coloured pen) questions that pupils might want to ask about the poem.
3. Now pass the poem on again. The third group should try to answer any of the questions (in a third colour).
4. Now pass the poem on one final time. The fourth group should try to analyse the questions.
   • What can they say about their nature?
   • What kinds of questions have been answered?
   • Which remain unanswered?
   • What do the questions (and answers) reveal about preparation required or subject knowledge which might need to be secured before your student teachers would feel confident about teaching the poem?
   • What resources can they now find to support them?
   • How might your student teachers use or adapt this activity for use with their own pupils?

For other related strategies (for use with Post 16 students especially) refer to Andrew Beard's book Texts and Contexts (2001).

Exploring Metaphorical Language
Research on refugee children's poetry writing (Obied 2007) indicates how poetry can be a powerful and enabling medium for EAL learners to explore their experiences. However, one of the major challenges which EAL learners face, when reading in a new language, is how to make sense of phrases whose meanings cannot be taken literally. The extensive use of simile, metaphor and idiomatic language in poetry written in English could therefore be a barrier towards understanding. This difficulty is not only experienced by EAL learners: children on the autistic spectrum can also struggle to grasp imagery and idiom. For more on this refer to What's in a Word? (McWilliam 1998). One quick activity to introduce the difficulties of metaphor to your student teachers is to ask them to list (and perhaps categorise) all the idioms they use in their everyday speech. They should then try to explain an idiom without using metaphorical language. (For example how would you explain 'it's raining cats and dogs' or 'a storm in a teacup'?) The student teachers could then go on to look together at a poem, highlight potential metaphoric pitfalls within it and discuss what pre-reading activities they might need to devise so that all learners could gain an understanding of the poem.

Using a reading response journal, a blog or a wiki
This could be either a private solitary or public place for student teachers to share developing responses to new poetry texts. Response journals can be very useful for GCSE and A level students too.

DARTs (Directed Activities Related to Texts)
Student teachers should be given opportunities to try out DARTs activities such as cloze, sequencing, mapping and text transformation with poetry texts and to reflect on/critique them. In my view, DARTs can be extremely effective when used well and when/if pupils are given time to discuss the choices they have made and to explore their interpretations. When badly handled, DARTs can reinforce 'right answers' rather than developing understanding about how meanings are created. In teaching about DARTs, I usually model a sequencing or a cloze activity, taking student teachers through the vital feedback stages especially. (The cloze activity could be done on an IWB using the 'Developing Tray' program.) Then, together, we discuss how to scaffold and to differentiate the activity to ensure that it engages and challenges all pupils. The other thing that it is important to stress is the need to be very selective about when to use DARTs as over use will lessen both impact and the level of pupil engagement.

Devising powerpoint or imovie versions of poems
Draw inspiration from examples on the Moving Words site at http://www.open.ac.uk/crete/movingwords/index3.html or on YouTube. Ask the student teachers to work in small groups and to a strict time limit. Pupils in primary and secondary schools could devise presentations which make cross-curricular links between poetry and science or humanities work.