This document outlines the goals and plan for a course on poetry. It will teach about poetic forms, movements, and the historical and social contexts of different poetic eras. The course aims to help students identify forms, describe poetic schools, and provide historical context for movements. It also discusses teaching methods like having students write poems, teaching forms topically, and using interest groups. Resources mentioned include poems, letters, scansion exercises, and information on forms, movements, and teaching poetry.
2. Course Rationale
I don't know much about poetry
I will need to teach poetry
This is a bad combination
3. Essential Questions
-What are the defining characteristics of various poetic
movements?
-How are form and function related in poetry?
-What social and historical factors have contributed to
changes in poetic form and content over time?
-How do various literary traditions overlap and diverge from
one another?
4. Enduring Understandings
-Various poetic schools and forms arose throughout time to
speak to the concerns of the age.
-The form and function of poetry are often interrelated in
ways that enhance the meaning of the poem or play against
it.
-Literary traditions have both built on and rebelled against
prior traditions.
5. Course Goals
-IWBAT identify and use regular poetic forms.
-IWBAT describe various poetic schools and the
characteristics that define them.
-IWBAT provide historical context for various poetic
movements and forms.
7. Products!
Poems!
Letter from W.H. Auden to T.S. Eliot
Scansion!
Lord Byron's Facebook
Or a soundtrack if I can't work out the kinks.
"Byron's Beatz"
8. What I Learned: Content
Forms
Rhythm and Meter
Rhyme
Movements
9. What I Learned: Self as Learner
I can teach myself better than my teachers taught me
I like to make my own fun
Cross-curriculuar connections help
10. What Comes Next?
How do I teach poetry?
How can I use poetry in culturally relevant pedagogy?
How is hip-hop related to traditional poetry?
11. Making It Accessible to Students
Have students create their own poems
Teach formal aspects topically
Discuss the history behind poetic movements or form jigsaw
groups based on interest
Differentiating with choice and interest
12. Sources
Auden, W.H. (1991). Collected poems. New York, New York: Vintage.
Christensen, L. (2009). Teaching for joy and justice. Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Rethinking Schools.
Cooney, Seamus. (2000). Bad poetry. Accessed 14 November 2011 from http://homepages.wmich.edu/
~cooneys/poems/bad/.
Friedman, N. (1965). Three views of poetic form. College English, 26(7), 493-500.
Gilbert, R. (2003). Contemporary American poetry. In Roberts, N. (ed.), A companion to twentieth-
century poetry. Oxford, England: Blackwell.
Government of Saskatchewan. Poetry. Accessed November 14 2011 from http://www.sasked.gov.sk.ca/
branches/elearning/tsl/resources/subject_area/ELA/ELARR/Poetry.shtml
Greenblatt, S. (ed.). (2006). The Norton anthology of English literature. New York, NY: Norton.
Harris, P. (Ed.). (1999). Zen poems. New York, New York: Knopf.
Johnson, W.S. (1955). Some functions of poetic form. The journal of aesthetics and art criticism, 13(4),
496-506
Jones, P. (Ed.). (2001). Imagist poetry. New York, New York: Penguin Classics.
Milner, J.O., & Milner, L.F. (2008). Bridging English. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Merrill Prentice
Hall.
Paglia, Camille. (2005). Break, blow, burn: Camille Paglia reads forty-three of the world's best poems.
New York, New York: Pantheon.
13. Sources (continued)
Poets.org. (2011). Poetic schools & movements. Retrieved 4 October 2011 from
http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/193
Polonsky, Marc. (2001). The poetry readers' toolkit: A guide to reading and understanding poetry. New
York, New York: Glencoe / McGraw-Hill.
Sansom, Peter. (1994). Writing Poems. Bloodaxe Books, Newcastle upon Tyne, England.
Snodgrass, W.D., Barrington, J., Patterson, R.R., Hodge, J.D., Kennedy, X.J., Ali, A.S., … Kumin, M.
(2002). Received forms. In Finch, A., & Varnes, K. (eds.), An exultation of forms: Contemporary poets
celebrate the diversity of their art. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press.
Strand, M., & Boland, E. (2001). The making of a poem. New York, NY: Norton.
Turco, Lewis. (1986). The new book of forms. University Press of New England, Hanover, NH.
World of Poets. (2011). Poetry movements. Retrieved 4 October 2011 from
http://www.worldofpoets.com/poetry_movement.php
Yeats, W.B. (1996). The collected poems of W.B. Yeats. Finneran, R.J. (Ed.). New York, New York:
Scribner.