Writer's Notebook - Poetry Reflection

Reading and writing have never been a strong suit of mine. I don't remember ever feeling confident in my reading or writing ability. I feel I was misled in the way of poetry. I never knew how informal poems could be. I understood them to be the hardest format of writing and even harder to comprehend.

The first piece of poetry that I have a distinct memory of was Shel Silverstein's Twistable Turnable Man. My third grade teacher would recite this at an impressive speed by memory nearly once a week. The whole class quickly became obsessed with its rhythm and we all asked for copies of the poem to memorize. We wanted to be able to recite it at her same speed. To this day, this is one of my favorite poems; mostly because I can recite its entirety by memory.

I was never strong in reading comprehension, so reading between the lines and understanding poetry was always the worst challenge for me in school. It always seemed that every poem I was shown had a hidden meaning or reference I was supposed to find out. So frustrating. This led to my misconception of what poetry was and how it was formed and formatted.

Assignments that included writing, especially poetry, were always dreaded by me as well as many of my classmates. I remember always putting them off until the last possible moment in which I would dump something onto paper and call it done. I have searched and searched for poems that I remember writing in high school but can not find. I did find some poems written in my sophomore year in undergrad.

These poems I always put so much effort into making them "sound right" or have deeper meaning beneath the surface. I read back on these poems and couldn't even tell you what I was trying to write about or reference to.

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Teaching reading and writing is something that I do feel fairly confident in. Poetry is where I become weary. I try my best to teach different formats of poetry and the art in its formation by the poet. It's difficult for me to teach well when I don't feel I have been taught well in elementary schooling. I do truly hope I can begin using poetry as a stepping stool into creating confident writers.

I think the most important quality poetry, or any writing, can have is a proud and confident author. When the author is full of pride, you know that the poem has special meaning to its poet. I think teachers must stop stressing all the different formats and "right and wrongs of poetry writing." Until, this is no longer the most important thing talked about when it comes to poetry, students won't become confident writers. Writing shouldn't be taught with strict rules, but rather find out on their own any "rules" or formats.

I loved reading the first couple chapters in Awakening the Heart: Exploring Poetry in Elementary and Middle School by Georgia Heard. My biggest take-away was the implementation of poetry centers that encouraged creativity, engagement, poetry, and reading and writing strategies.

My favorite of the poetry centers might be the "treasure hunt for poetry." This involves students going into books they are familiar with searching for poetic words or lines and writing them down before illustrating the meaning. There is power in this method because of the "treasure hunt" feature first grabbing students' interest. It also encourages fluent reading and a determined, critical eye analyzing words and language used to determine if it is "poetic" or not.

THE POETRY STUDY CENTERS:

Amazing Language Center

Treasure Hunt for Poetry

Cracking-Open Words

Word Scramble

Finding Word Sound Personalities

Listening Center

Discovery Center

Poetry Window and Observation Center

Illustration Center

Performance Center

Music Center

Revision Center

Poetry Editorial Center

Poetry Reading Center

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"Every student needs to know that the classroom is a safe place where every voice is respected."

Georgia Heard