[Annie Leach]

Do you ever have them memorize poems? We memorize poems in all our grades and in rhetoric school, students perform them 3x a year. I find that memorizing poems increases the understanding, and therefore, the enjoyment of the poem. I often have to ‘sit on’ a poem for quite a while before I feel like I understand it. The time it takes to commit a poem to memory helps students gradually grow in their understanding of poetry.