I like to teach with short poems or songs as they are snack-size literature suitable for a 50 minute class period. Here is a short poem for class analysis like several others I have posted. There is more here than a class can cover in one 50 minute period. Teacher will have to tailor the tasks and pace for young (age 11 -12) or older students.

Boy with a Sling

A stone arcs through the sky.
A bird drops from the air,
flutters in the grass.
Chicks starve in the nest, then decay.
Can there be a god?
Ah yes, the boy.

July 29, 2008

This non-rhyming poem deals with serious subjects (god, cruelty, nature, pointless killing) and will give a sensitive child a lot to think about. Most of the vocabulary is easy. Go through the analysis steps and exercises described below. Then ask students orally for their impressions line by line. You may wish to start with impressions, teacher's choice.

Notice the poem starts with an image of the boy and returns to him in the last line. This is a common feature in some poems, stories and song: circularity.

Search for similar poems in this site using "Robin Day poem".

Generic Advice for Teaching with Poems (pick and choose)

1a. Ask the kids to check words they do not know in their dictionaries.

1b. In this poem ask the class for synonyms for arc, drop, sling, flutter, chick, grass, starve, nest, decay, child.

2a. Teaching with poetry is about pointing out rhyme (or the absence of rhyme). Ask kids to link with a pen or pencil the rhyming words after explaining rhyme(s) and rhyming. It will prob be a new word for them.

2b. Ask the kids about the structure of the poem. Count the lines and paragraphs. Sometimes the rhyme words are at the end of a line (external rhyme) and sometimes the rhyme words are within the sentence, inside the sentence (internal rhyme). Point this out to the students. The rhyme phrases are often in twos, threes or fours and can jump to other paragraphs. The poet is using skill and art.

3. Punctuation is not always correct in poems. Point out a few examples or possible variations. The poem above has comas and periods, some do not. Some writers dispense with punctuation altogether. Some poets invent new words to suit their poem. Ask the students to invent a new word. For example slurple is a combination of slurp and purple.

4. Ask students to underline the verbs in red and the nouns in blue and prepositions (positions is simpler for kids to understand) in yellow. The subject can be circled,

5. Ask students to suggest homonyms.

6. If the poem is simple, as above, ask students to think up or invent alternate lines that would be suitable.

8. I also ask them to perform the poem in various voices as a whole class, or individually in the style of Bugs Bunny, a gangster, sadly, with force, with an accent, or melodramatically. They can be quite comical.

Final Comments

So you see there is much one can do with a short poem. Check out Sweet-face Oxen or Those Scary Seeds. These are nice poems to start for kids and both are musical. Child's Logic and A Life are both rhyming, and the first one very sad. All my poems are short. Picking at a Rose is a love poem. Tell children they will not understand the love between two adults till they are much older. I tease them saying, "Oh you understand, I love my mommy, I love my teddy, I love chocolate, but you don't understand romantic love and pain or a broken heart. That is real pain." Ask the kids if they know that some people die from a broken heart. Children become very serious when you mention this, especially girls. The word Romantic comes from Rome, the empire (and confusingly has various meanings). Do not use very technical or antique poems with children.

In China I was teaching very large classes of college students and found that reciting orally with the whole class was the most useful way to get the students speaking. This overcomes individual shyness.