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From: Benita Strnad <bstrnad>
Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 12:15:30 -0500
Over the years I have worked with hundreds of student teachers, or people who are studying to be teachers. They resist using poetry in any form in the classroom. I think the reason why is that poetry is more like music than it is just good old solid reading.
By music I mean that so much of poetry is dependent on sound. Sound in your head and the actual sound waves as the poem is spoken. It takes a little bit of thought and certainly practice (reading out loud to yourself) to present a poem to a class or a group of young children. The reason why I single out these age groups is that they are totally dependent on what they hear to gain an understanding of the concept presented in the poem. They cannot look at the words to gain meaning - they must hear. A poem that is read badly is hard to understand. I am sure that Garrison Keilor practices his poems before he reads them for his radio presentation and I tell student teachers to practice the poems several times and listen to themselves as they speak the words.
After speaking a poem out loud the poem tends to reveal itself and its form to the reader. Many times the rhythm of the words is easily seen and heard, but many times it is not and the speaker/reader has to work that out for himself. By practicing reading a poem out loud the readers discovers that they may stumble and hesitate in the wrong places and this garbles the meaning of the poem. This takes practice and it is a little work and certainly not found in easy to use manuals on how to read poetry out loud.
When a poem rhymes it is easier to understand and certainly easier to present to a classroom of children than is a poem that does not have that easy out for teachers. That could be the reason why children grow up thinking that poems have to rhyme is that kind of poem is all they have heard in their classrooms and in their homes. I for one am very thankful that Keilor reads poems on the radio. It is too bad that more people don't read poems on the radio. If more of us heard the spoken poems in aural form we might not be so leery of using them in the classroom.
It has always astounded me that few people talk of music lyrics when they speak of poetry. After all the lyrics of songs are poems and most of them don't rhyme. Song lyrics are totally dependent on rhythm. I often tell middle school and high school teachers to use music lyrics as a hook in the classroom. I am constantly pushing the books of Chris Raschka (Mysterious Thelonious and Yo! Yes come to mind) use in the classroom. These works are certainly rhythmic poetry and the words don't rhyme although the illustrations do give clues as how to read the works out loud.
I also encourage teachers to use the picture type poems in the classroom. (James Stevenson poetry books) These are poems in which the words form pictures or patterns that illustrate the words. These poems are not auditory or script dependent at all. They are totally visual, and without the visuals they can't be understood, but these are great poems to use with students of all ages.
In short I think we don't expose students to poetry because it is a little more work than we want to do. Rhyming poems or easy rhythmic poems are easier to present when read out loud. Therefore children grow up thinking that this is the way poems should be. They must rhyme and have rhythm. It is not easy for me to get student teachers to use poetry in planning their lessons, but I keep trying. I think it is important even though oftentimes I am not convincing enough to sell the idea. However, by not using all kinds of poems in classrooms we don't expose students of any age to the wonders of poetry and the varied means of expression to be found in words, and we stifle ourselves and our culture in the present and in the future as well.
Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 12:15:30 -0500
Over the years I have worked with hundreds of student teachers, or people who are studying to be teachers. They resist using poetry in any form in the classroom. I think the reason why is that poetry is more like music than it is just good old solid reading.
By music I mean that so much of poetry is dependent on sound. Sound in your head and the actual sound waves as the poem is spoken. It takes a little bit of thought and certainly practice (reading out loud to yourself) to present a poem to a class or a group of young children. The reason why I single out these age groups is that they are totally dependent on what they hear to gain an understanding of the concept presented in the poem. They cannot look at the words to gain meaning - they must hear. A poem that is read badly is hard to understand. I am sure that Garrison Keilor practices his poems before he reads them for his radio presentation and I tell student teachers to practice the poems several times and listen to themselves as they speak the words.
After speaking a poem out loud the poem tends to reveal itself and its form to the reader. Many times the rhythm of the words is easily seen and heard, but many times it is not and the speaker/reader has to work that out for himself. By practicing reading a poem out loud the readers discovers that they may stumble and hesitate in the wrong places and this garbles the meaning of the poem. This takes practice and it is a little work and certainly not found in easy to use manuals on how to read poetry out loud.
When a poem rhymes it is easier to understand and certainly easier to present to a classroom of children than is a poem that does not have that easy out for teachers. That could be the reason why children grow up thinking that poems have to rhyme is that kind of poem is all they have heard in their classrooms and in their homes. I for one am very thankful that Keilor reads poems on the radio. It is too bad that more people don't read poems on the radio. If more of us heard the spoken poems in aural form we might not be so leery of using them in the classroom.
It has always astounded me that few people talk of music lyrics when they speak of poetry. After all the lyrics of songs are poems and most of them don't rhyme. Song lyrics are totally dependent on rhythm. I often tell middle school and high school teachers to use music lyrics as a hook in the classroom. I am constantly pushing the books of Chris Raschka (Mysterious Thelonious and Yo! Yes come to mind) use in the classroom. These works are certainly rhythmic poetry and the words don't rhyme although the illustrations do give clues as how to read the works out loud.
I also encourage teachers to use the picture type poems in the classroom. (James Stevenson poetry books) These are poems in which the words form pictures or patterns that illustrate the words. These poems are not auditory or script dependent at all. They are totally visual, and without the visuals they can't be understood, but these are great poems to use with students of all ages.
In short I think we don't expose students to poetry because it is a little more work than we want to do. Rhyming poems or easy rhythmic poems are easier to present when read out loud. Therefore children grow up thinking that this is the way poems should be. They must rhyme and have rhythm. It is not easy for me to get student teachers to use poetry in planning their lessons, but I keep trying. I think it is important even though oftentimes I am not convincing enough to sell the idea. However, by not using all kinds of poems in classrooms we don't expose students of any age to the wonders of poetry and the varied means of expression to be found in words, and we stifle ourselves and our culture in the present and in the future as well.
-- Benita Strnad Curriculum Materials Librarian McLure Education Library The University of Alabama With taxes we buy civilization. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendall HolmesReceived on Mon 18 Apr 2005 12:15:30 PM CDT
