by Vicky Masson
April is National Poetry Month. Here are some ideas I have used and I always come back to when teaching poetry in my world language class.
Acknowledgement and Credits
I love professional development and I have attended many amazing workshops all throughout the years. I got inspired and felt refreshed after each one of these experiences. Although many of the workshops were not specifically geared to world language teaching, I borrowed ideas to use in my classes. Unfortunately, I cannot tell exactly from which workshop I adapted each idea. I can say that the ideas come from workshops I attended at the National Gallery of Art, the Portrait Gallery, the Phillips Collections, the Kennedy Center, and other Smithsonian museums.
How I teach poetry in a world language class
I love words and poetry highlights each word and makes words come alive.
Let’s briefly talk about a few examples on how I teach with poems in Spanish class,
– I read poems aloud to my students,
– I have them recite poems from memory, and
– I invite them to write their own poems.
The ideas below can be easily transferred to other languages.
Read aloud poems
Some poems are fun to read, some are long, and some others say so much in a few words. The following two poems are great examples for making interdisciplinary connections.
The book Yum! MMMM! Que Rico! Los brotes de las Américas by Pat Mora and illustrated by Rafael López is a collection of haiku and a springboard for teaching a combination of poetry, science, and geography. Get to know the origin of some of your favorite fruits while enjoying illustrations that are sublime! This book is a wonderful way of introducing students to the art of haiku to appreciate words to the fullest. It never ceases to amaze me how a few words can say so much!
Los zapaticos de rosa by José Martí and illustrated by Lulu Delacre creates the perfect ambience to teach about plot in language arts. This poem also includes other topics to explore such as, social justice, empathy, and kindness. The illustrations are as beautiful as the words in the poem.
Reciting poems
Through Poetry off the Page based on Glenis Redmond‘s workshop at the Kennedy Center, students learn how to best recite poems using their whole body through
-positioning themselves to recite by planting their feet on the ground
-projecting their voice to be heard
-personalizing a poem (make it theirs through movement and gestures), and
-doing it with purpose
The poems ‘Paisaje en el tintero’ by Juan Carlos Martín Ramos in Las palabras que se lleva el viento and ‘El triunfo’ by Marjorie Agosín in Red hot salsa: bilingual poems on being young and Latino in the United States, helped me implement Poetry off the page successfully. I encourage you to give it a try!
Writing poems
Blackout Poetry
I wrote about the collaboration with another school in Barcelona, España as part of #SingleVoicesGlobalChoices to write blackout poetry both in the post Empowering Language Learners with Powerful Learning and in the article Connect, Adapt, Try New Things in Best Practices of Online Learning in COVID-19. Basically, blackout poems can be created using the pages of old books or articles. Students, as poets. isolate and then put together single words or short phrases from these texts to create something totally new.
Poetry from Art
I remember vividly the day that docents at the National Gallery of Art walked a group of teachers through different ways of creating poetry based on an art piece. I even wrote one myself! And in English! After brainstorming using a web organizer, I created a poem based on an art piece that is still meaningful to me. I am sharing it below.
After this experience, I learned more about the connection between art and poetry. It is fascinating! The following three books keep on being great inspirations to me:
- The Tree is Older than You Are – a bilingual gathering of poems and stories from Mexico with paintings by Mexican artists – selected by Naomi Shihab Nye
- Celebrate America in Poetry and Art – National Museum of American Art Smithsonian Institution
- Side by Side – New Poems Inspired by Art from Around the World – Edited by Jan Greenberg
Poema sensorial
In the PD session, I learned that the following activity is based on “Walk into a Picture” from a booklet provided by Carol F. Peck. In sum, it is about using your senses to express what you see, hear, smell, touch, and taste when confronted with an art piece.
Follow these steps all while enjoying the process:
- Look at the art and based on it, answer each question with words or phrases
Line 1. What do you hear?
Line 2. What do you smell?
Line 3. What do you see?
Line 4. What does it taste like?
Line 5. What do you feel on your skin? and
Line 6. How do you feel inside?
- Once you have answered each question with words and phrases, circle only one word or phrase from each line
- Choose only ONE of the circled words and copy it out on an index card
- If the word that you chose belongs to the first line, place it where the teacher tells you
- Once all students have placed the words from the first line, proceed to follow the same procedure for second, the third, etc. until you reach the last line
- When all the lines are complete, students read the poem together.
- If students like the poem, great! If students do not like how the poem sounds, students can move a few words or phrases around
- Students read the poem again in silence and if everybody likes it, students read it all together again
- (optional) Students can record themselves reading aloud the poem
It seems like a long process, but once you do it, it makes total sense. Trust me!
See an example done by my 5th grade class based on an illustration from the book Gathering the Sun by Alma Flor Ada and illustrated by Simon Silva.
La sartén, el palo de amasar, un jarrito,
Yo huelo la comida, café, libro, café, libro, pan
Las montañas, el campo, las cortinas, la mesa
Familia,
Calor,
Juega feliz.
Poema corto
I had so much fun creating poems using the ‘poema corto’ technique during a PD workshop some time ago. Then, I loved seeing my students’ faces when they created theirs and read them aloud to their friends.
Creating the ‘poema corto,’ which literally means ‘short poem’ is quite a long process, but it is totally worth it! Try it yourself or with your students and let me know in the comments how it went.
This is the graphic organizer in Spanish that I provided my students to make it easier to follow the steps of writing their ‘poema corto’
| Abstracto (no lo puedes ver) Interno | Colores | Concreto (lo puedes ver) Externo | Verbos (lo que ___ puede hacer) |
1. 2. 3. | 1. 2. 3. | 1. 2. 3. | 1. 2. 3. |
Steps to follow:
- Write three abstract words, three colors and three concrete word
- Write three verbs that describe each of the concrete words
- Circle one of the abstract words
- Circle the color that best describes it
- Circle the concrete word that best describes the abstract word
- Below the graphic organizer write the abstract word followed by the verb that best describes it
- Continue writing the sentence by adding a comparison (a metaphor or a simile) using the three words that you had chosen. Complete your idea
- Once you choose a word, you may not use it again. You may not need to use colors
- Create two more sentences following the same process
- Read the sentences aloud to a friend and choose one to share with the class
- (optional) illustrate the sentence and record yourself reading aloud using Flipgrid, for example
Below are some examples written by my 5th grade Spanish students as a second language. As I teach Spanish, the poems were written and later recited, in Spanish. I was so proud of my students’ work. Enjoy!
El odio corre
como un lobo enojado.
Las emociones van y vuelven
como un jaguar enjaulado.
Los pensamientos viven
en una casa
porque los pensamientos viven en mi cabeza.
Los pensamientos leen
en mi cabeza
como yo leo libros.
Los sueños abrazan como un oso de peluche rosado.
Los sentimientos dan vueltas como un globo en el espacio.
Los sentimientos se divierten como un parque de muchos colores.
Los sentimientos comunican como palabras.
Sharing poems and poetry resources
If you know of other Professional Development opportunities for learning other ways to get students excited to learn poetry or other poetry resources, please share about them in the comments.
Other resources by Pat Mora and Rafael López
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