Parent Tips: Reading and writing poetry
We tend not to teach kids to read or write poetry anymore, which is a shame. Great poetry more closely matches how young children think–freer in all ways–and it deepens students’ understanding of the power and sound of words. Words have depth, and poems are able to express some of the most complex ideas and feelings better than prose. They also give your child a richer word sense and understanding of the human condition. This is why June Writers incorporates a significant amount of poetry into our curriculum, beginning in Practice 1.4.4: A capital cat poem.
If you are a parent who feels lost in space when it comes to poetry but want your child to be at home in the world of great poems, keep these tips in mind:
Reading poetry
Poetry can feel mysterious to children (and adults). What is it? Why is it different from prose? Is that OK?! Model calm in the face of uncertainty by teaching your child that when they read a poem, they should read it out loud, twice, and go slow. Ask your child to do this. (Reading out loud lets you hear the word sounds and rhythm of a poem better than silent reading.) Let them know that their goal is to feel the poem, not just understand the words, and it’s OK if the poem doesn’t completely resolve for them right away (or, sometimes, ever). Sometimes you get more from a poem by looking at it from the side of your eyes rather than face on, the same way we approach the contradictions embodied in our most fundamental human experiences.
If your child is completely baffled by the poem and you want them to have a literal understanding of it in addition to a sense of the overall feel, read a line and then ask your child to summarize what it says. Once you agree, move on to the next line. This process should be a bit like teaching a child a melody by practicing it together note-by-note in chunks, then putting it back together into an indivisible whole.
June Writers asks kids to read and digest all manner of poems beginning in Level 1 and continuing through all five levels of our program, with increasingly challenging analysis and writing tasks. In Level 5, we introduce the formal terms of poetry meter and how they do or don’t capture phenomena in the real world.
Writing poetry
A poem is a freer expression of a thought, mood, or feeling than prose writing (our everyday way of writing, the basis of which is sentences). Let your child know that their intention when writing a poem should be to capture a mood, emotion, or idea. They do not have to use the same punctuation and grammar conventions that we expect of them in prose writing; kids are, understandably, delighted to hear this. Nonetheless, most children struggle with starting a poem because they feel uncertain. So, encourage them to choose a source of inspiration (mood, experience, word, cat, etc.) and just begin writing. Tell them not to doubt themselves or think too hard about what they’re putting on the page. They can always edit later. Poetry is not logical, so we have to be willing to encourage children to let their silent intuition guide them and see where it goes (“You’re doing great! Hold onto your inspiration and keep writing until it feels complete”), which is more or less the opposite of most other things we teach. Don’t stop their writing process or offer edits until they have a complete draft, and encourage them to do the same.
We include tips in the practices for more techniques to help your child write specific types of poetry forms (haiku, sonnets, odes, limericks, free poems, etc.). A common question kids have about poems is whether they have to rhyme. The answer is no, unless they’re writing specific forms of poetry that call for rhymes.
Editing poetry
This is one of the most mysterious human practices, most similar to editing a musical composition. There are no rules or conventions beyond the particular expectations of the specific form of poetry, if any. Yikes! So, how do you teach a child how to edit their poetry? The most effective approach is to treat the poem like a melody. Read the poem out loud and point out words and lines that speak to you—feel melodic—even if you can’t explain why, and then gently highlight words or lines that take you out of the melody. Those words will feel relatively flat or lifeless, or lose the through-line of the mood, emotion, or idea of the poem. (Even if you don’t realize it, you do this all the time when you listen to music. So, trust yourself that you can hear authentic beauty in poetry, too.) Encourage your child to make the flat part of their poem as musical as the moving parts.
Sometimes a child’s poem may be a total jumble of words that don’t capture any mood, emotion, or idea. That’s OK. Praise the effort, if the child put work into the poem, but encourage them to start from scratch with a fresh inspiration. Is there a word or image in the poem that they’d like to build on? Etc. Be encouraging.
Finally, as you edit, explain the method you’re using to your child. With repeat exposure, they’ll begin to use the same method. And remember, do all your poetry editing out loud. Always read out the line before and after any edits. A poem is a piece of music that comes alive with breath. You want your child to learn to hear when a word is melodic or lifeless. It is such a gift to give to a young person.
Sample Student Poetry
Does this process work? Judge for yourself. Below are two poems by the same student; the assignment was to write odes using the vocabulary words. What we find exciting about these two poems is the way this particular child’s distinctive voice begins to emerge in these odes from the same lesson. This student began this lesson trepidatious about poetry but now has confidence in their developing voice and ability to write and edit poems, on themes light and less light. This is what we teach every student.
Ode to a Period
.
Two hemicycles of a circle joined perfectly in unison
not quite a polygon, but a shape much greater
a minuscule dot on a rip of paper
pandemonium stops when that almighty dot enters the pulpy plane
Quarreling letters cease the bicker, tamed sane
"I am not a minus!
Nor a sink
nor a mincing minuet.
For I am the mark that joins you into more than shapely ink!
I am a period, and you are mine, forever in debt"
.
slow joe
The woman sped through the intersection
the deep wound in her arm cursed with infection
she stops at the red
fear pulsing through her head
she opens the internet
and blindly runs over a movie set
malediction spills from her mouth into the frigid night air
the blood from her arm has reached her hair
she looks to the gun pointed straight at her head
her eyes full of dread
"you can't get away this time"
the movie man says
his voice sour as a lime
a shot to the head
makes everyone's tears shed
the woman lays lifeless
the man's regretful face priceless
the cameras cut
the movie shot is shut
what the actors did not know
was that the "fake bullet" was replaced by joe
