Strategies in Teaching and Assessing Poetry

Teaching entails the passion and creativity of anyone who wants to become fulfilled in this
chosen field. To bring life into the classroom, teacher’s strategies become indispensable to make learning
possible even in this time of pandemic.

The Oxford Dictionary defines strategies as a plan of action designed to achieve a significant
goal. In teaching, strategies refer to how instruction is delivered to allow some students to learn the
content. This may also refer to the different engaging activities afforded by the teacher tailored to
students’ levels, competencies, and learning styles. When you can find these teaching strategies in books
and on the Internet, several others are considered personal to the teacher.

In this lesson the pre-service teachers will learn strategies that are helpful in teaching and assessing
poetry.

According to Harper (1988), students will understand and appreciate literature when the
strategies used to teach literary texts are within their level. The primary goal is to make students enjoy as
they learn literature as a vital and relevant aspect of human existence.

In the humanistic approach, literature is taught not in the traditional way where students read a
text. It posits the idea that the interpretation of literary texts must be a dialectic process where readers
appropriate their understanding beyond the author’s purpose (Ricoeur 1976). In this case, literature and
its genres undergo three sequenced phases with suggested activities (Harper 1988) as follows:

The preparatory phase consists of pre-literary activities that allow students to use their linguistic
abilities for a meaningful literary experience. Some of these activities to be used include identifying
parallel themes with non-literary texts such as film, painting: describing a character or a scenario
through word of associations; establishing comprehension through resume techniques, vocabulary
building, prereading questions, guided role-play, quote identification; and predicting topic or theme from
the title, and inferring meaning from the lines of the poem (Steiner 1971, Kramsch 1985).

The interpretative phase allows students opportunities to express, negotiate, and refine their
interpretations of the text. In this dialogic process, the activities include dialogue techniques ( Mead
1980), sequenced, personalized question strategies Birckbichler (1980) and Muyskens (1983), rewriting a
text, oral presentations like choral reading, reading aloud, spoken poetry, etc.

The synthesis phase as the final stage enables students to view a text as a unique whole so that
activities such as commenting on the poet’s work, writing a reader’s response, and differentiated
outputs like photo collage, painting, and others will enable them to express how a specific work affects
them and foster their creativity.

So it is very important that as English teacher, we always have our own techniques on how we can teach
the hidden meaning of each poem to our students because as English teacher, and always encounter
different literary pieces which is hard to understand at first glimpse so I have here 6 strategies

the first one is the first one is

1. Read it aloud a few times

 so as a teacher, we have always encountered that different learning styles of our students in terms
of reading poetry, some may learn when they are reading silently but nowadays readers can easily
comprehend if they are reading it aloud. So reading aloud makes us better understand the real
meaning of the poem because while we are reading the poem the sound and rhythm of it will help
us to be more interested to know the message of the writer that he wanted us to know. so the
spoken word is very powerful instead of just hearing what a collection of words sounds like in her
head when those words are spoken aloud we are entering into the realm of performance and before
engagement, so we are teachers so we are always the ones who will lead our students so before
letting the students read the poem by their own we should read it for them because there are times
that students can encounter words wherein they can't pronounce. So it is very important for the
teacher to always have to always lead especially in terms of reading so it is essential that within
allowed for the students many times or several times, it can help them to understand or to have an
idea of how they can perform or they can read the poem with their own

so the next one is

2. Learn about the poet prior to the reading

so before reading a poem, it is important to search for the writer's background because we will have
an idea on what are the reasons why he wrote the specific literary piece, it is important to know the
background of a writer because mostly the right about their experiences their mood their life events
their family and relationships as well as nature so learn as much as you can about the poet where
and what time period did she or he live because understanding the time period is essential for us
readers to draw conclusions about the poems meaning. So it is very important to know first the
background of each writer because maybe they have they have in a situation where in they wrote
that reflects their emotions.

so the next one would be

3. Identify and define words and dense do not know

so we should always be the guide of the students, we should let them ask us in their queries. So in
reading a poem, we can always encounter words that we can’t understand at first glimpse and I may
suggest that if we are planning to read the poem we should first install dictionaries because
dictionaries are powerful in terms of words that we cannot easily understand dictionaries can
answer it by the guide of the teacher as well, the students will enlighten about their queries that
they may encounter in reading poem.

4. Visualize the images, clarify words and phrases

so visualizing is when the author paints a picture in their head. Visualization brings the readers to
life it helps the students feel connected to the phone because they are able to see the characters
and their actions as if they are part of the same end they are becoming more involved so by letting
the students visualize what is the real happening on the poem they are being more engaged and the
teaching-learning process.

5. Teach figurative language to the students.

so there are some poems that use simple words wherein we can easily understand, but there are
some poems that have different meanings. So it is always important to teach our students the
 figurative language before we give the poem to them to have a background on the different things
that they may encounter in reading a poem. So, understanding the poetic device will help the
students to unlock the hidden meaning of a poem this figurative language can always be
encountered in different poems, so it is important to have a background knowledge of it so
figurative language follows: alliteration, personification, metaphor, idiom, onomatopoeia, and the
like.

6. Evaluate the poem theme and allow your students' understanding to grow
so things include death and esteem loyalty perseverance. So, theme is the main subject that is being
discussed or described in a piece of writing so it is very important to know or to acknowledge the
theme of each poem because we can get what is the real point of the writer why he wrote this kind
of literary piece So what is it all about what's the point that is the questions that answer the theme.
So theme helps us to know and mark in our mind what is the main subject of a poem that we have
read.

Different assessments used in teaching poetry

1. Poetry Portfolio
2. Teacher and Peer Conferences
3. Rubrics and Assessment List

1. Poetry Portfolio

A portfolio may take some time to compile but this is the best way to assess students’ growth in a span
of a semester or grading period. Here the evaluator will be able to see how the student started and their
growth in the whole body of work. This portfolio serves as the reflection of the students and writing
their poetry from the beginning to the end of the semester.

Guidelines for Making a Poetry Portfolio

we have here the acronym CRAFT

C -collect all the poems that you have done

R- respond to the analysis,

A - act by making your own portfolio

F - form your own portfolio design and

T - try and finish your final product

Through the student portfolio, the teacher will be able to evaluate the student's performance from the
beginning to the end of the semester.

2. Teacher and Peer Conferences.

This can be done peer-to-peer or by students to teachers. This serves as a window to see the insight of
the students and the purpose of writing the poem. Here the teacher can give suggestions and feedback
to the students about their work.

What are the steps in this method and how can it be applied?

This is a conference where a teacher can set a schedule for consultation so that she can give some advice
feedback and suggestions toward his or her students. Furthermore, the students can use this conference
to identify those items that need to be revised. Teacher and peer conference is the independent
assessment, but most of the time accompanied by the poetry portfolio.

3. Rubrics and Assessment List

A rubric is a type of rating scale or a structured approach to assessing students’ poetry and focuses on
assessing a predetermined set of criteria. This can be beneficial to both parties for the students and the
teacher since the student will have an idea of what is the expected outcome, and the teacher will grade
his/her student based on the criteria given to the students.

A rubric would be meaningless if we were not going to give it to our students prior to the deadline or the
passing date. This rubric will serve as a guide for the students on making or fulfilling his/her final
product. Furthermore, this rubric serves as a guideline for the teachers in giving grades to his or her
students since this rubric contains the criteria that the student must achieve for his or her final output.

STRATEGIES AND
ASSESSMENT IN
TEACHING POETRY
STRATEGIES IN TEACHING
POETRY
❖ Reading out loud.
❖ Unlocking unfamiliar words.
❖ Paraphrasing
❖ KEYS Method
STRATEGIES AND
ASSESSMENT IN
TEACHING POETRY
STRATEGIES IN TEACHING
POETRY
❖ Reading out loud.
❖ Unlocking unfamiliar words.
❖ Paraphrasing
❖ KEYS Method
STRATEGIES AND
ASSESSMENT IN
TEACHING POETRY
STRATEGIES IN TEACHING
POETRY
❖ Reading out loud.
❖ Unlocking unfamiliar words.
❖ Paraphrasing
❖ KEYS