Do your students hate poetry, or do they just dislike your poetry lessons? That may sound harsh, but let’s face it, it can be a challenge to make poetry analysis feel engaging! It’s rigorous work, and it can be intimidating for a lot of students.
After years of teacher-centered poetry instruction, we decided to switch things up and let students do the work. Before you roll your eyes and think my students can’t analyze poems independently, hear us out. Poetry analysis is far more manageable and rewarding when it is done in baby steps. By breaking up the large task of understanding a complex poem into smaller chunks, students are able to push overwhelm aside and instead get really focused on a particular aspect of a text. They feel a more frequent sense of accomplishment and build their confidence.
Today, we walk you through our favorite poetry resource–poetry stations. In just five stations, we explain how to get every student analyzing word choice, rhyme scheme, theme, and more! You can say goodbye to class periods where students zone out and stay silent as you do the hard work of breaking down a poem. Listen in to hear how you can get students doing the thinking and talking about any poem in your curriculum.
Tune in now to hear:
- [00:40] All about the “Easy Week Experience”
- [03:40] Jessica’s negative experience with poetry as a student
- [05:00] Caitlin’s negative experience with poetry in college
- [07:00] Why teaching and learning poetry can sometimes get boring
- [08:00] How stations can work to engage students in poems
- [09:10] The five poetry stations we use
- [09:40] How “The Unknown” station works
- [10:55] How all other stations guide students to analyze the poem
- [13:00] How to model the expectations for these stations
- [13:30] The true power of poetry
- [14:10] Reflect on your poetry lessons: do you students hate poetry? Or do they just dislike the format of your poetry lessons?
- [15:40] How to get students teaching the class after stations work
- [16:00] Shop our resource!
Subscribe & Review in iTunes
Are you subscribed to our podcast? If you’re not, we want to encourage you to do that today. We don’t want you to miss a single episode. We add a brand-new episode every week, and if you’re not subscribed, there’s a good chance you’ll miss out on those. Click here to subscribe in iTunes!
Now if you’re feeling extra awesome today, we would be super grateful if you left us a review over on iTunes, too. Those reviews help other people find our podcast, and they’re also so much fun for us to go in and read. Just click here to review, select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” and let us know what your favorite part of the podcast is. Thank you!
