Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Cornfed]

I want to teach a lesson about English poetry, but I'm not sure how to go about it. I thought about explaining the basic repeating units of speech and the types of poems, but I'm not sure what activities or handouts to give the students. Does anyone have any ideas?

[Cracker006]

I'd suggest you start with the idea of rhyming words.
Then the idea of meter.
Painting "pictures" using words, making songs without music.

The first "poem" I would give them, would be a nersery rhyme.

Jack and Jill
Old Mother Hubbard
The itsy bitsy spider

Then I'd take them up to songs that rhyme:

I got sunshine, on a cloudy day...
When it's cold outside, I got the month of may...

Then perhaps take it beyond that IF they are REALLY advanced.

I would really start at the beginning with rhyming words, just to make sure they totally follow what you're getting at... even if they're advanced, they may not have studied how important rhyming is to us.

[patongpanda]

For my elementary students, I had them complete mad libs (without seeing the poem) for a simple poem with blanks.

Then I did another poem and they filled in blanks according to their feelings.

Then I had them make posters with images.

Hope that helps.

[Roving_gypsy_gurl]

If they're young learners try www.poetry4kids.com

It's got poems, games, lesson plans, etc. The poet will also answer emails from your class.

[pootle]

Shel Silverstein has some short, simple verses that may work for you. I've done this one with middle school classes. The students seemed to get it and some interesting discussions came from it.

The Voice
There is a voice inside of you
That whispers all day long,
"I feel that this is right for me,
I feel that this is wrong."
No teacher, preacher, parent, friend
Or wise man can decide
What's right for you - just listen to
The voice that speaks inside.

[ajuma]

Most Korean students have a terrible time with rhyming words. They just don't/can't hear them.

To help them, I start with a simple word like "an". Then they have to find as many rhyming words as possible (in teams perhaps) shouting them out from their seats. They might come up with can, man, ran, fan etc.

Then I move to a "harder" word like "bed". This is harder because it rhymes with words like "head" as well as "fed". (The SPELLING is different, but the SOUND is the same.)

The last one I use is "shoe". This has so many similar sounds....I think maybe there are 50 words that rhyme: too, to, two, knew, new, flew, through, threw...


I use Robert Louis Stevenson's poems such as The Swing and Bed in Winter. He's got a lot of nice ones with good rhythm and meter in his "Child's Garden of Verses".

[Scott in Incheon]

This is a good site to introduce poetry.

The poems are simple and controlled...anyone can write one.

http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~leslieob/pizzaz.html

[mrgiles]

i do a haiku lesson sometimes - i link it in with teaching about syllables (how many claps in "orange" etc). i get some examples of english haikus that use the (actually wrong) syllabic pattern of 5-7-5, and ask the kids to work out how many syllables per line. after they've worked out the pattern, i list some things of nature to see if they understand that. then i write down 5 things like

river

winter

potato

frog

dung

and demonstrate how u would brainstorm ur feelings about these topics (how they look, sound, smell, how u feel about them), and then try to get them to write simple haikus on one of these topics sticking to this artificial 5-7-5 pattern.

there's another one i do where i segue in from a discussion of avril lavigne's sk8er boi - i chop up lines of the lyrics and the students have to put them in the right order. after that i point out rhymes in the song. i then give them some simple nursery rhymes or other pop songs and see if they can work out rhymes. split the class in two teams, and write a simple word like can on the board. the team that can make up the most rhymes in like 2 minutes wins. after that u can talk about rhythm and then get them to write a simple poem (rhyming or unrhyming) about an animal or something.

[poet13]

You could also use poetry set to music.

It's a Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong is a great start at any level.

The students can do rhyming word pairs, a cloze exercise, singing, anything you want.

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=u2OpPfEPqM8

[Bibbitybop]

Rhyming is hard to teach. For younger kids, teach them syllables (also difficult to teach. "Pig is ONE syllable, not "pi-guh!") and have them do Haikus.

[poet13]

For elementary kids at the haggie I worked in, I did sounds.

ap/ep/ip/op/up, then change the last letter...
at/et/it/ot/ut, change it again...
ad/ed/id/od/ud...they enjoyed the chanting and the rhythmn of similar sounds.
Sometimes we would use the vowels as the end, not the beginning...
ba/be/bi/bo/bu... (this is when I learned about "bah boh"
da/de/di/do/du...
We didn't learn long and short vowel sounds until later.
It didn't make sense to them at first, but when we started learning words with those sounds, a little lightbulb went on in their heads.