Poetry is something that I have always had mixed emotions about. Although I do enjoy listening to poetry, reading it individually and especially writing it has always been a challenge. I always found the structures and patterns when writing poetry to be very difficult. As a student I was always intimidated by reading and writing poetry. I feel that my experience may be attributed to they way it was presented and taught in school. Poetry was always taught as this very abstracted, figurative concept. It also never seemed to fit into anything we were learning. Occasionally a teacher would teach a poetry unit or pay special attention to it during poetry month.
After reading Christensen I feel that she works hard to make a space for poetry in her classroom. Christensen uses poetry writing from the first day in the classroom to the last. I think spreading it out and connecting it into other units and lessons also helps students grow as poetry consumers and producers over a more extended period of time.
As for writing poetry, I like how Christensen uses poetry as a way to create a community in the classroom. She has students write about things that are relevant and important o them making the process more authentic and accessible. By having students share their poems with the class it is a way for students, especially in the beginning of the year to make connections with other students in the classroom. Poetry sharing also gives the teacher a chance to make connections with students or notice any reoccurring trends in the classroom. It also offers students a chance to reflect and express emotions, issues and challenges in a creative and constructive way.
I like how Christensen uses popular and famous poetry as a model and guide for student writing. Christensen and her students breakdown the popular poem and look at its elements and how they work, that the serves as the starting board for student writing. Not only does having a model greatly help students but it always the students to gain exposure to famous poetry and poetic elements.
Overall reading the poetry chapter helped me to see poetry in a new way. I never spent much thought about using poetry in my own classroom. I think Christensen’s ideas of using poetry as a means of creative expression and community building could be very beneficial for the individual students and the class as a whole.
I also really liked the way that Christensen uses poetry as a community builder. It might be hard for some of these student's to journal and share their deepest feelings in prose, but poetry provides (I think) an easier outlet for students to be honest about themselves. Having students read the particular poems that she chooses is a great way to show them how rewarding it can be to share difficult emotions.
ReplyDeleteI too appreciate those like christensen who work to express the need and importance of poetry. She does a great job of talking about how different poetry is in terms of expression. It can help students to express a specific identity that is different than in any other type of writing. Starting off the year with poetry and ending with writing their own poems as christensen did is an excellent way to see growth in the writing and appreciation of poetry for students.
ReplyDeleteI also liked how Christensen incorporated poetry throughout the entire year and across multiple units. In my experience, poetry was usually just one unit of the year, and outside of that, it was ignored. No one ever appreciated it because it was always an abstract concept with a lot of confusing terminology. It almost felt more like a science than an art form. I think Christensen does a great job of flipping this completely, and embracing poetry as both literature to be studied and an art form to be practiced by students.
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