[Renee]

When you say analysis does this include teaching close reading skills/annotation? Close reading helps the students understand the poem as well as analyze it. It helps to engage the students in asking questions about the poem or text (Why did the author use this specific word? How does the rhyme scheme or metric line used contribute to the poem’s meaning? What words or phrases are repeated? Why? etc.). For example, leading students in a Socratic way to recognizing that the metric line used in Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” mimics a horse’s trot, brings both understanding of the poem’s artistry as well as a sense that there is more going on in the poem than what is there at first glance. Once students can learn to see in this way, they can transfer these skills to any poem and to books later on. Unless you have tried this already, it seems it is along the lines of what you are looking for.

[Rachael Stahr]

Yes, I do a lot of close reading skills. We spend a lot of time trying to just understand the poem. But spending so much time in defining and explaining seems to remove the JOY of poetry. And I may explain it and students really understand what’s going on in the poem – but they don’t seem any stronger at understanding the next poem we read! They are just as bewildered. I feel as though I need to enable them to just enjoy poetry while also allowing them to understand the poem – and neither is happening. (Perhaps this is the literature version of the cram-pass-forget cycle that I see in so many other cycles?)

[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.