2022 Post #28 -- Poetry Rocks!

by Aubrey Sebestyen

“It’s so boring.”

“I never understand it.”

“Not really my thing.”

Each year, my sophomores express their…misgivings with studying poetry. I know sighs of resignation are coming before the word “poetry” even escapes my lips.

“Poetry’s not your thing, huh?” I ask one who I notice has a set of AirPods sitting on her desk or (gasp!) an earbud in one of her ears. “What are you listening to right now?”

Billie Eilish. Jack Harlow. Olivia Rodrigo. The names flow out of them.

“Oh good!” I respond. “Poets!” I receive some skeptical side-eye, but I take advantage of technology at my fingertips and quickly pull up the lyrics to a song by one of the named artists (a clean version, of course) and project it onto my whiteboard.

As teachers we know making our lessons relevant to our students is the hook that can entice them to engage fully with content, and to do so in a meaningful, effective way. We need not start with Shakespeare or Whitman; the skills one needs to analyze and appreciate poetry are far more important than learning about any one specific poem or poet. So we begin with music.

I ask if the song up on the board, whatever it is depending on students’ musical tastes that semester, is a poem. Inevitably, most say no, and we engage in a debate over what defines a poem. We discuss ballads and lyric poetry. Sonnets. Odes. Elegies. Poetry isn’t just musical – it is music.

I model how to annotate the lyrics, asking for their input on literary devices or figurative language they notice. Allusions are particularly fun if it means they must explain to Millennial ol’ me the Hollywood gossip they refer to.

Then it’s their turn. My students’ job is to select a song they enjoy, ensuring it is a clean, radio edit that I have pre-approved for class, and to apply either a TPCASTT (Title, Paraphrase, Connotation, Attitude, Shifts, Title Reevaluation, Theme) or SOAPStone (Subject, Occasion, Audience, Purpose, Speaker, Tone) analysis to the piece. They also must identify five different examples of unique literary devices or figurative language used in the song and be able explain how these contribute to the song’s theme, mood, or tone.

For the duration of the poetry unit, each student opens a class with their song-as-poetry analysis as the bell ringer (and sometimes get to play us out at the end of class with the song itself). It’s unique every day, is highly engaging, and reinforces their understanding of the elements necessary for poetry analysis. Best of all, it helps students see both “classic” poetry and modern music through a new and unifying lens. Rock on!

Further Reading:

Aubrey Sebestyen teaches 10th Grade English, AP Language and Composition, and PEN, an elective for academically gifted students, at Central Bucks High School East in Doylestown, PA, where she also serves as co-adviser for Phantasmagoria, a club celebrating student art, poetry, and music.

2020 Post #23 -- You Say, I Say

by Chris Kehan

I love using music in the classroom to teach reading strategies and of course to ignite writing.  "You Say" by Lauren Daigle is very inspiring.  Hand out copies of the lyrics and play the song.  Allow your students to listen to the song as they read along with the lyrics.  Discuss what they think the lyrics mean.

Have your students divide a page in half (in their Writer’s Notebooks) and label the left "You Say" and the right "I Say."  Have them list what the lyrics say from both vantage points (example: You say I am strong, I say I’m weak). 

Then have students think of someone in their lives that is close to them or knows them well (i.e. parent, friend, teacher, etc.)  They can jot what they think that person would say about them under the "You Say" column and how they might counter this under the "I Say" column.  Model your own "You Say, I Say" so they feel more comfortable doing their own. (example: You say I’m organized, I say it takes a lot of behind-the-scenes planning to look that way) 

Return to the part of the song that is the refrain/chorus and have them put their ideas into the format of "You say I am _____ when I ____." These lines will become their poem.  You can have students use line breaks and some white space between the "You say __" and "I __ " parts so it looks more like a poem.  They can close the poem with an "I believe" statement of their own.

"Most People Are Good" by Luke Bryan is another good song/lyrics to use to get young writers to jot down what they believe about things in their world.  They can write "I believe" poems using these lyrics as a mentor text.

Further Reading: 

Chris Kehan is a Library Media Specialist in the Central Bucks School District and a proud fellow of PAWLP (PA Writing & Literature Project) whose passion is teaching reading and writing to all grade levels and ages. Follow her on Twitter @CBckehan

2019 Post #17 -- Writing From a Lyric

by Brett Vogelsinger

I first used the song "A Long and Happy Life" by the band Delta Rae with my class to spark a Writer's Notebook piece about my students' roots.  "I was born to..." or "I was raised by... " make excellent starters for students to explore their heritage in words, perhaps even using quick images and figurative language as the songwriters do in the song.

Some of my students this year wrote lines like "I was raised by a strict Jewish mother and a free-spirited Catholic father" and "We were born to improve the world" and "I raised with brothers who tackled each other for fun" and "I was born to be everything my dad could not be." These lines are windows into my students' lives and afforded me views I might otherwise overlook.

This song is my Poem of the Day about a week prior to starting our personal narrative writing project, and it is the perfect way to start thinking about the stories that make my students the people they are today and the adults they are becoming. Try sharing this song or maybe one of your personal favorite. Find lines in the lyrics that empower new writing ideas for your students and help them to explore their roots.  In my classroom, we even begin to write as the song is playing.

I should also add here that Delta Rae often offers a free ticket giveaway for teachers on their summer tour, a drawing I won (thanks to some generous student nominations) for their Philly 2018 concert.  This band puts on one of the most phenomenal live music shows I've seen, and they have a genuine appreciation for the work of teachers.  I can't wait to see them in concert again in May! Much love to Delta Rae :)



Further Listening:

Brett Vogelsinger is a ninth-grade English teacher at Holicong Middle School in Bucks County, PA.  He has been starting class with a poem each day for the past six years and is the creator of the Go Poems blog to share poetry reading and writing ideas with teachers around the world. Find him on Twitter @theVogelman.

2019 Post #15 -- Sing That Poem!

by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater

Click to Enlarge Image

Sometimes I find my way into a poem through the window of meter. I adore playing with meter, but when I find myself relying too heavily on the same syllable counts again and again, I turn to songs.

If you wish to write with meter but do not know where to begin, choose a song, any song: "Twinkle Twinkle" or "Happy Birthday" or "Three Blind Mice." Or don’t choose a song but instead, choose a poem with a meter you like and want to try. Write it out. Then, count out the syllables and mark the stresses.

Next or first, select a topic, maybe something new or perhaps something you have already written about but wish to try in a new form. Now, on a fresh page of your notebook, write the syllable counts down the left column of your page. Experiment with writing within this syllable and stress constraint. You may choose to vary a bit, or you may not, but either way, you will have tried something new. And to test if the meter works, sing your words to the tune of the song. Listen carefully and revise based what you hear.

In April 2015, I wrote from a different song meter each day. One of these poems ended up in my book With My Hands (Clarion, 2018). I always tell students that books have secrets, and one secret of With My Hands is that "Painting" (found in the image above) can be sung to the tune of "I’ve Been Working on the Railroad!"

Part of the work of a writer is stretching oneself. Experimenting with meter and song is one way to do this.

Further Reading:

Amy Ludwig VanDerwater is author of books including FOREST HAS A SONG, EVERY DAY BIRDS, READ! READ! READ!, DREAMING OF YOU, WITH MY HANDS, and POEMS ARE TEACHERS. Amy lives in Holland, NY, blogs for young writers at The Poem Farm and Sharing Our Notebooks, posts on Twitter @amylvpoemfarm, and visits classrooms all around.

2019 Post #3 -- Near Rhyme

by Brett Vogelsinger

Gabriel Fried's poem, "Twilight Field" establishes a delightfully creepy mood with simple langauge and one short stanza:


Twilight Field

The spirits play a children's game;
they pose as trees in clover.
I look. They stay. I look. They stay.
I look again. They're closer.


The second read of this poem demands a choral reading from the class, which adds to the sinister overtones.  And if a student just happens to be open the door and come in late as you read the last word of the poem together as a class . . . well that's just perfect!  For me, this poem catpures that feeling we can sometimes experience when alone with nature, that something is watching us or drawing near, for in nature, we are never entirely in solitude. (Note: The Dr. Who fans in your class will impulsively want to point out a connection to The Weeping Angels at this point as well!)

I use this poem on days when I want to maintain my Poem of the Day routine, but I have limited time.  I write this statement on the board: "This poem has an excellent example of 'near rhyme.'"

After two readings, I ask students to defend this statement, even if they have never heard of "near rhyme" before.  In each class, someone is able to infer what that term must mean, and the student points out that "clover" and "closer" seem to rhyme, but do not excatly rhyme, and the repeated "a" sound (assonance) in "game" and "stay" create a similar effect.

While I do not make it a formal homework assignment, I invite students to pay attention to the lyrics the next time they listen to their favorite music.  Where in the lyrics can they spot an example of near rhyme?  Songwriters often employ near rhyme in order to fit the needed ideas within the rhythm of the music without compromising the overall rhyme scheme.  Put to music, near rhymes sound even more like real rhymes.

While literary terms can be dry when learned in isolation, taught in the context of a quick, enjoyable poem and favorite music they seem far less daunting.

For another Gabriel Fried poem to share, see this post from last year's collection.

Further Reading:

Brett Vogelsinger is a ninth-grade English teacher at Holicong Middle School in Bucks County, PA.  He has been starting class with a poem each day for the past six years and is the creator of the Go Poems blog to share poetry reading and writing ideas with teachers around the world. Find him on Twitter @theVogelman.

2018 Poem #13 -- Wait, Rappers Are Poets?

by Zachary Sibel

This year I wanted to try something new when it came to teaching poetry, so I made a strange connection. I thought about what I like to eat when I go out. I realized that most the time my favorite items to order are appetizers; they are smaller portions, you get a variety of choices, and when you put the right combination together, you are rewarded with an experience that is filling. 

I decided to present poetry from various classes and movements to my students in the same way. I used three to five poems from the Romantic, Victorian, Modern, Postmodern, and Contemporary eras of poetry. I found that my students were more engaged when they got to read through and pick the one that stood out to them, rather than sit down and talk about them all.

One poem that really topped them all when it came to student engagement was Tupac’s "A Rose That Grew From Concrete." I present this poem with no context of who Tupac was (or still is, that is up for debate) and just focus on language and the use of metaphor. After reading the poem aloud twice, I ask students to dig into the imagery and symbolism of this poem. The beauty of this poem is it impacts students of all backgrounds and upbringings. 

This year I had a number of students connect with it, one of whom discussed the idea that, “the only person who needs to believe in you is you, " a rather sophisticated reflection for a middle school student to have. I let the students carry the discussion, and when I see it fit, I end with providing a little background as to who Tupac was, the idea of West Coast rap, and how language can be used to examine various social issues.

Additional fun: I focus a lot on the questions, “Is all music poetry? Is all poetry musical?" With Bob Dylan winning a Nobel Prize for literature, the question begs to be answered or at least discussed. After showing students "A Rose That Grew From Concrete," we play a little Kahoot game that requires students to read a line of verse/lyric and determine if it is poetry or hip-hop. Students find themselves recognizing some of the lyrics but not all. They realize that the distinction between hip-hop and poetry is more complex than we may originally think.

Further Reading:

Zachary Sibel is a hip-hop fan, English teacher, and department chair at Central Bucks West High School in Bucks County, PA. 

Go Poem #30 -- Song Lyrics Mash-up

by Penny Kittle

Some students resist writing poetry because they struggle to find words to contain their ideas. Poetry feels Important, Serious, and Literary. It is. But it is also simple, playful, and found in the everyday. In fact, that is its Superpower.

To help my students learn to play, I spend days on found poetry.  We use words we find in an editorial, news article, school hallway, book, or in this case, songs to compose our own poems. The rules are simple: you can't add your own words; you use what you find.  This takes pressure off and opens possibility.

My writer's notebook was open and under the document camera at the start of class one day.  I had strips of lyrics to three songs from the Lumineers piled on two empty pages.  I placed one line, then another, searched for phrases to repeat, and then added those between emerging stanzas. The beauty was in the clean, efficient revising: I lifted lines from my emerging draft and returned them to the word pile or cut a phrase into smaller parts and played with the power of line breaks to slow down my reading.  I searched for consonants to repeat and unlikely combinations that led my poem to new ideas.

“Can we get started?” students asked.

Yes, please.

Penny Kittle is a high school English teacher and writer from North Conway, New Hampshire.  You can follow her work on Twitter @pennykittle.

Further Reading:

Go Poem #29 -- Parallel Lines

by Brett Vogelsinger

The repetition of grammatical structures, known as parallelism, works especially well for poets because it establishes rhythm and momentum in a piece of writing.  Any writer is concerned with the "flow" of a piece, how it moves, and parallelism is a key skill to acquire for our students as writers.

Joy Harjo's poem "Remember" employs parallelism on two levels.  The repetition of the word "remember" to introduce new ideas couples with the similar structure in the clauses that follow give this poem its remarkable sense of music.

After our first reading of the poem, I ask students to hypothesize the cultural background of the poet from the imagery in the poem.  Most classes are able to conclude the poet is writing from a Native American background using the personification of earth, moon, and stars and the reference to dance in the closing lines as their primary clues.  We briefly discuss how Native American cultures view man's relationship with the earth and how this differs from other cultures.

Just before the second read, I introduce the concept of parallelism, relating it to the simpler term repetition. How does repetition/parallel structure enhance this poem? After a second read, kids are quick to pick out that the structure adds to the rhythm, giving the poem a songlike quality.

As an extension, it can also be rewarding to write together as a class based on this poem.  I have kids write their own "Remember . . . " lines on sentence strips.  On my magnetized board, we attach them and work them into our own collaborative "Remember" poem reorganizing for greater music and momentum as we go. In writing this poem, we have used, listened to, and revised parallel structure.  

Two other poems that work well as alternates for a similar mini-lesson:  "The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee" by N. Scott Momaday or "Famous" by Naomi Shihab Nye.

Brett Vogelsinger teaches freshman English students at Holicong Middle School in Doylestown, PA where he starts class with a poem each day. Follow his work on Twitter @theVogelman.

Further Reading:

Go Poem #22 -- Mood Music

by Lisa Levin

Musician Jeff Tweedy recently turned Carl Sandburg’s poem “Theme In Yellow” into “an airy, idyllic folk song” that appears on Brooklyn musician David Nagler's tribute album, Carl Sandburg's Chicago Poems.

The poem describes a midwestern October and is filled with images of "prairie cornfields / Orange and tawny gold clusters" and children "singing ghost songs / And love to the harvest moon" while gathered around a pumpkin (or someone pretending to be a pumpkin), who serves as the poem's speaker.

I project the text of this poem on the screen while my students listen to the song. I tell the students very little beforehand, except that they should try and ascertain whether the poem develops a story from the images the poet creates. After the song, I ask a student to volunteer to read the poem to the class. Next we discuss the literary element of mood. Students define the mood of the poem and then provide lines from the poem as supporting evidence. It was interesting that half of the students found the mood to be peaceful and half found the mood to be sinister!

Lisa Levin teaches ninth-grade English at Holicong Middle School in Doylestown, PA.

Further Reading:

Go Poem #12 -- Advertising With Poetry

by Brett Vogelsinger

Today's post offers two poems for the price of one.  Both are in video format, for the poems have been adopted by companies in hopes of making their brand appeal to the hearts and minds of customers.

First, we have Charles Bukowski poem "The Laughing Heart" found in a Levi's commercial.

Second, we have Maya Angelou's "The Human Family" found in an iPhone commercial.

Using one or both of these poems, discuss these questions as a class:

What does the company seek to communicate about their brand using this poem?  What associations do they want you, the audience, to make with Levis or Apple?  What connotations are they developing for their brand? 

What are your thoughts on using poetry for the purpose of advertising? Does it devalue the poem that someone besides the author is using it to make money?  Or does it bring poetry, framed professionally with images and music, to a vast audience, making poetry more approachable?

It may be worth noting that both of these commercials were produced after the death of the poets who wrote the poems, so someone other than the original poet had to give permission to use the poem in this manner.  If you were responsible for the copyright of a famous poet's work, what questions would you ask before granting permission to use the poet's work in a television commercial?

Brett Vogelsinger teaches freshman English students at Holicong Middle School in Doylestown, PA where he starts class with a poem each day. Follow his work on Twitter @theVogelman.

Further Reading:

Go Poem #5 -- Clear Rhythm, Ambiguous Mood

by Joy Kirr

I was first introduced to the poem “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke when Michael W. Smith (co-author of Literary Elements: How to Teach What Really Matters About Character, Setting, Point of View, and Theme) came to our middle school. We use it in our 7th grade ELA class just the way he presented it to us.

I have students read the poem once to themselves.

Students read the poem a second time silently, annotating something new that they notice the second time around.

Students listen as the teacher reads the poem aloud this time, taking note of the rhythm. The teacher opens discussion with this question: Does the rhythm remind anyone of anything?

Students note what they feel is the overall mood of the poem on this sliding scale, what Michael Smith calls a “semantic differential scale”:

The students circle or highlight three words from the poem to support their choice, and as a class we discuss, “What words contribute to the mood or atmosphere of the poem?”

Students can now take the time to move their mark on the sliding scale or not, depending on the evidence they hear in the discussion.

We use this poem to practice fishbowl discussions, so you could extend the sliding-scale question into a discussion of why it is considered “warm” or “cold.” I find I change my mind often during fishbowl discussions, depending on the background information students bring to the table.

Joy Kirr currently teaches 7th graders in Arlington Heights, IL and blogs at http://geniushour.blogspot.com. Follow her on Twitter +Joy Kirr 

Further Reading