ENHANCING EDUCATION THROUGH POETRY

Robert Kelemen
LBS 355
Enhancing Education Through Poetry
Poetry often gets a bad reputation among the English teacher community. These negative
feelings stems from the lack of universal rules, and the one thing English teachers seem to like
most are rules. This negativity towards poetry often places poetry out of the core subjects of
Reading or Writing resulting in it being labeled an Art. However, there are educators who
successfully teach Reading and Writing through instruction that is centered around poetry.
Incorporating poetry into a lesson can improve student reading skills, writing skills, and class
involvement.
The repetition, patterns, and rhyming in poetry can help students understand reading
concepts both visually and auditorily. When students read poems out loud they develop a deeper
understanding of the language through sounds, rhyme, and rhythm. Connecting sounds to words
helps with reading comprehension. Faver (2007) found that poetry is a great tool for teachers to
use to help students to practice reading, because it can help students develop phonics and
vocabulary. Favore brought up a good point on how both phonics and vocabulary are essential to
reading. The structure of poetry attracts the students into learning while also developing several
reading skills.
While poetry can be used to help strengthen reading skills, poetry can also be used to
develop student writing skills. Writing format, sentence structure, grammar, punctuation, and
parts of speech can all be learn by using poetry. However, because poetry has no universal
writing rules, teachers should use examples that support proper format. Hughes (2007) pointed
out that students can improve their writing proficiency by writing poetry. Because students are

ENHANCING EDUCATION THROUGH POETRY

more involved in the process, they are more eager to learn the structure and rules of writing. As a
result of wanting to learn the rules, students can transfer those skills to writing essays.
On top of strengthening reading and writing skills, poetry could also encourage student
participation. Little or no student interest in participating in class can result in poor grades.This
type of detachment could stem from students not being comfortable in class to express
themselves. Poetry can be used to make the students comfortable to express themselves through
working with others. Sizmur (2008) believed that because students enjoy poetry, it could be used
to help students open-up and participate. The more a student is willing to participate with others,
the more they will want to participate in education. The goal of participating in class is to get the
students interested in learning, which helps educators teach. When students want to learn and
educators want to teach awesome things happen.
For my lesson that incorporates poetry, I would start by reading a Dr. Seuss book, with
the students following along. Introducing the lesson with Dr. Seuss will help students understand
the concept of rhyme and basic poetry. When I feel the students have grasped the main idea, I
would break the students into pairs and pass out different Mad Lib style poetry templates to
each pair of students. Together, each pair of students would have to fill in the blank spaces and
fill in the verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs to create their own poem. I would also post an
example of possible verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs they can choose to use. Then when
each pair is done, I would read through each one to find the tone of the poem. The next day I
would read each poem to the class but in a funny tone, pirate, princess, robot, etc, that
appropriately captures the mood and style of each poem. After I read each poem I would
complement it then ask the students what part they enjoyed most, then I would ask the students
to identify the verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs. This activity began by strengthening

ENHANCING EDUCATION THROUGH POETRY

students by reading together, then students had to understand grammar to complete the
assignment to fortify student writing skills, and finally the students had to work together and
collaborate to create the poem which promotes student class participation. This lesson is a triplethreat

ENHANCING EDUCATION THROUGH POETRY

References
Faver, S. (2008). Repeated reading of poetry can influence fluency. Reading Teacher, 62(4), 350352.
Hughes, J. (2007). Poetry: A powerful medium for literacy and technology development. What
Works? Research into Practice, (7), 1-3.
Sizmur, J. (2008). Attitudes to reading survey-rhyme or reason? Literacy Today, 57, 29-31.