Why Should I Teach Poetry

Why Should I Teach Poetry?
• Memorizing and reciting poetry builds confidence.
• Poems give children an easy way to remember a lesson or value.
• Poems inspire us.
• Poems captureemotions and ideas in lyrical phrases that are often easy to remember.
• Poems offer a chance to build connections within multiple areas of a child's curriculum.
• You can use poetry toteach grammar and vocabulary.
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Eight Steps for Teaching Kids Poetry

I know from first hand experience that finding the right poetry for kids can be a difficult task.
Aside from finding theright poem, the actual teaching may also be a bit daunting for you. Many of us were not taught poetry when we were children. But, we can still enjoy teaching children poetry and learning it ourselves!There are a few basic steps that you can follow which will help you be comfortable teaching children poetry and will help the students get the most out of it.
1. Read the poem aloud.
Have studentslisten to you as you read the poem aloud. If it is a difficult poem, you may want to give them some background information before you begin.
2. Identify and define words the students do not know.Ask the students for words that they are unfamiliar with. Then, have the students write each word's definition on their sheet. You can either have a student look up the words in a dictionary, or youcan have the definitions prepared ahead of time.
3. Read the poem aloud again.
Listening to a poem a second time will help students to understand it.
Before you do this, you may want to ask studentsto listen for something in particular. You might ask, "How does the author of this poem feel about flowers? How do you know?"
4. Summarize the poem.
For this step, you will ask the students tosummarize the poem in their own words.
This can be very helpful when you are teaching more complicated poems to older students. But even with young students, it's important to know that they understand...