Some poetry writing activities for the Secondary English classroom

IFTE conference

20th April 2011

Dr. Sue Dymoke

 

Learning Intentions

By the end of the session you will have:

• Been introduced to a variety of strategies for writing poetry and responding to your students’ own work;

• drafted several poems

Poetry in the secondary curriculum

• ‘Poetry becomes more problematic as pupils move from experiencing poetry at primary school to studying it at secondary’ (Fleming 1996)

• Danger of students’ engagement with poetry becoming a matter of producing ‘schooled responses’ (Misson & Morgan 2006)

Teachers need to play the game too - not just be the referee:‘Teachers encourage... writing by writing it themselves; unless teachers do that they are tailor’s dummies in a nudist colony - very bad manners.’ (Stibbs 1981)

‘Children need to know that adults too, struggle with words’ (Nicholls 1990)

Modelling - some recent

Auckland observations • Poems used as models i.e ‘My Puletasi’• “the teacher made a poem about her pearls…

[that] connects to us” (Yr 10 student)• Students were asked to question their teacher

about her meanings (personal link)• Students are much more receptive if teachers

write with them in classroom on the data show rather than if they bring in prepared models (several teachers made this observation)

Small group/whole class composition using IWB, OHP, wireless keyboards, laptops, flipcharts

Using range of visual, textural, aural, oral & written stimuli for writing (postcards, sherbet lemons, locusts, buttons, sound effects, found texts)

Sharing drafts at different stages in a lesson Giving structureGiving choices

Free writing at beginning of a workshop

session

• Metaphor activity - a good way of introducing the topic and of getting your students to introduce themselves

• Furniture game - idea first developed by Sandy Brownjohn

Poets’ comments on drafting

Learning to draft‘ It is not popular with kids in school but they have to learn that if they want to be writers then they have to rewrite, like Beckham practising his free kicks for hours before doing them for real.’

(Jackie Kay)

Approaches to writing first drafts‘quarry’ a notebook for ideas (Cliff Yates) or ideas on a dictaphone (Brian Moses)

Number of drafts: Between 5 and 40

Poets’ comments on drafting

On punctuation‘A dash hurries you along more than a comma. An exclamation mark feels really OTT. I don't like question marks unless they are totally necessary because they make the reader read it the way you are and they feel a bit manipulative like Hollywood movies that set out to make people cry. If anything I like simple punctuation, not to overstated so that the poem can breathe’ (Jackie Kay)

[from interviews with poets in Dymoke, S. (2003) Drafting and Assessing Poetry - book also contains examples of their drafts]

For examples of NZ poets drafts look at the Tapa pages on NZEPC site

A Mesostic poem

S a p r i s i n g

i n m y

S p r i n g h o m e garden

s o f t s w e et yellow

spreading

Mesostic poems - some ideas

MANUKA

TREE

FERN

KAKABEAK

CABBAGETREE

DAISYF

LAX

• Writing from the perspective of an object

• Poetry can be about all sorts of subjects and written from many different points of view.

• Refer to the poems & prompts on your slips of paper

• Each of you will be able to choose an object & a context

Imagine a world without an object or creature:

• Magnets• Sand• Bees• Rain• Worms• The Colour Blue• Magic• Crisps• Sheep• Words….

• Paintings, photographs & microscopic images can be great sources of inspiration

Use postcards & gallery websites (especially those with the zoom in feature to look at the paintings)

• http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/paolo-uccello-saint-george-and-the-dragon

• Nikon small world images:

http://www.microscopyu.com/smallworld/gallery/contests/2010/index.html

‘An important aspect of using writing games, activities and formal starting points is that neither the teacher nor the pupils should assume that they are going to lead to a fully-fledged poem every time. We do not expect every child who takes part in a PE lesson to go home and decide to be a footballer.  We do, however, expect their repeated attendance and attention to improve their general fitness and co-ordination.’ (Hughes 2004)

• Making anthologieshttp://www.poetryclass.net/lesindex.htm

• Using The Poetry Archive and making a ‘My Archive’ selection for use in your classroom

http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/teachersHome.do

• Have a look too at the nzepc site and bookmark performances by New Zealand poets

• Found Poetry• Uses texts from wide range of

textual sources such as junk mail, adverts, newspaper reports, road signs, recipes.

• Poems can extract words from the text - strict advocates of found poetry add no new words nor change the order in which they appear but you can be flexible!

Indicators demonstrating 11 -14 year old students’ progress in writing

poetry include:developing a greater awareness of the writer’s craft (including use of structures & techniques to inform & inspire their own writing)

learning to draft/work with a drafting partnerlearning to look critically at their own work & accept constructive

criticism from othersdeveloping figurative writing & imaginative selection/use of

vocabularymoving away from constant use of rhyme or ‘rhyme for rhyme’s

sake’ extending understanding of potential source material or subject

matter for poetrymoving away from over reliance on the pattern or form of a

modelmaking an independent, deliberate choice to write a poem

(rather than an alternative genre) (Dymoke 2000)

Your poetry writing

• Which ideas will you take from this session and make your own?

• How will you use your own draft poems in the classroom?My student teachers’ hopes for their pupils’ poetry learning

Contact me…

• sd100@le.ac.uk• www.le.ac.uk/se/currentstaff/suedymoke/index.html

For some further ideas about how I work with poetry you could look at:Dymoke, S. (2009) ‘Drafting, Sharing, Hearing, Seeing: Teaching Poetry with ICT’ in English,

Drama, Media Issue #13, pages 13 -20Dymoke, S. and Hughes, J. (2009) 'Using a poetry wiki: how can the medium support pre-

service teachers of English in their professional learning about writing poetry and teaching poetry writing in a digital age' English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 8 (3).

Dymoke, S. (2009) Teaching English Texts 11 -18, London, Continuum.Dymoke, S. (2003) Drafting & Assessing Poetry, London, Sage.Some recordings of my poems are available at http://www.poetcasting.co.uk/?p=191