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By Ben Curran
Poetry can be intimidating. As students, many of us were taught that the goal of reading a poem was to
"understand" exactly what the poet was trying to say. No small charge.
The Common Core State Standards can be intimidating, too. Many educators are hearing that poetry and literature
must give way to informational text under the new standards.
It would be easy to scratch poems from our syllabi these days. But in our quest to meet the common core in
English language arts, poetry can and should play an important role. All that is needed is a shift in the way we read
and discuss poems with students.
What if we give up on trying to "get" a poem and explain its one true meaning? Instead, we can discover the
richness of the text and learn from the questions and puzzles poems present to us. Once we make this shift, nearly
any poem becomes "teachable" at nearly any grade, from Emily Dickinson to Walt Whitman to Maya Angelou and
beyond.
Let's examine some three questions that will hopefully inspire you to add poetry to your teaching repertoire.
But there's more to it than that. The ELA anchor standards (anchor standard number in parentheses) call upon
students to be able to:
• Make inferences (1).
• Cite specific textual evidence to support conclusions and answers (1).
• Determine and analyze the theme of a text (2).
• Analyze the way ideas develop over the course of a text (3).
• Interpret words and phrases (4).
• Analyze connotative and figurative meanings of words (4).
• Analyze how word choice shapes a text (4).
• Analyze the structure of a text (5).
• Assess how point of view shapes a text (6).
• Analyze how two texts address the same theme (9).
I look at this list and think, "poetry … poetry … poetry … ." And that's just the reading standards! There are anchor
standards in Language, Speaking and Listening, and even Writing (even though poetry isn't mentioned once
there) that also lend themselves to the use of poetry.
With your questions in mind, it's time for the fun part—reading and discussing the poem. I read the poem aloud to
students and give them each a copy so they can follow along. (They store these in a binder, creating an anthology
of great poems as the year progresses.) If it's a longer or more complex poem, I read it one stanza or section at a
time, asking a question or two after each part.
Another option for shorter poems is dictation. As I slowly read the poem, one line at a time, students copy it into
their poetry notebooks. This approach helps them listen actively and really gets them thinking about the words and
structure of the poem.
Often, after reading a poem, I begin with a simple question: "What do you notice?" I asked this after reading
"Dreams" by Langston Hughes. A student shared the observation that in the first stanza, it reads, "For if dreams
die" and in the second it reads, "For when dreams die." He went on to add that "since there are two kinds of
dreams, goals and the ones you have at night, maybe (Hughes) was talking about one in the first stanza and the
other in the second." This astute answer gave me goosebumps.
As you move into your discussion, remember that questions about poetry rarely have one correct answer. In fact,
some of the best questions to ask students about poems are questions that you don't even know the answer to
yourself. I recently read "Popcorn Can Cover" by Lorine Niedecker with my 5th grade students. I asked them
afterward: "Why isn't there a period at the end of this poem?" I hadn't the faintest idea. But one student answered,
"Maybe because the story isn't over yet."
Keep in mind the common standards focus on supporting answers by citing "specific textual evidence." Follow up as
many questions as you can with, "What in the poem makes you think that?" This will not only help students
practice the important skill of grounding their conclusions in the text, but it will also lead to more dynamic
classroom discussions.
As a recent Washington Post article explains, many fear that quality literature and poetry cannot be a part of
common-core-aligned instruction. Yes, the standards do emphasize informational text in all subject areas (not just
language arts). But poetry's not out of the game: Indeed, it's one of the best tools we have for teaching critical
thinking, depth of understanding, and analysis