When I was little I was given multiple poetry books, from Shel Silverstein's "Where the Sidewalk Ends" to, my favorite, Crystal Bowman's "If Peas Could Taste Like Candy". I read through the poems so many times and learned to really love them; they are humorous and intriguing to young people. To me as a child the illustrations really stood out and pulled me in to read the poem, as well as the shape of the poem and how the words moved across the page. I really loved my poetry books when I was younger.
In high school I wrote a lot of poetry because I was in a creative writing class. We wrote every type of poetry and sometimes it was very hard, but I really liked writing it and most of the times wrote more than the suggested amount of poems for an assignment. I was like a challenge to me: how to figure out a way to write what I want in the style of poetry I had to write it in. I still find poetry, and writing it, very interesting, but some types of poetry I do hate.
So while reading Chapter Nine I realized that it is true. The younger you get a child involved in poetry the more they will appreciate it when they are older. I had multiple poetry books when I was young and I now love writing different styles of it. My brother, on the other hand, did not engage so much in poetry as a kid, so he does not take as much interest now in poetry as I do. It makes sense that this would be a true statement, so kids should get involved with poetry at a young age.
I agree with you Lauren. I think parents and teachers should engage students in poetry when they are younger. I didn't start reading poetry until late in my middle school years and I didn't appreciate it. I think I would have enjoyed it more if it was something that I was previously engaged in. It wasn't until the end of high school when I started appreciating poetry and started writing some of my own. With that being said, I think it would be a great idea for poetry or creative writing classes to be introduced early.
ReplyDeleteI agree with both of you. When I was younger I loved the Shell Silverstein books. I read them so many times, that I memorized which were my favorites in the book and could turn to the exact page. To love poetry that young is rarer now a days. Poetry should be incorporated into the curriculum when the students are younger. Poetry brings almost I feel a musical sense to the words. When I read poetry, I want to sing it, or have some soft background music playing. In middle school, we had a whole poetry unit, where we explored every kind of poem. I found this to be so interesting! If we could show children more of this style of expressing themselves, they would grown to appreciate it more!
ReplyDeleteI have been thinking a lot about poetry for the past couple of weeks. It seems that my Spanish, English, and Teaching classes have all decided that first semester would be a good time to talk about poetry. What I noticed was that most of my peers are not happy about it. In my English class our poetry unit was treated like a chore, even our professor saw fit to begin the class with a disclaimer about how poetry is not as bad as it seems. And he is right, poetry is not as bad as it seems. To children and adults alike, poetry can seem mysterious and tedious to understand. I think that is a common belief that many people carry with them throughout their school days. When reading the chapter about poetry in "A Family of Readers" for our teaching class, I liked the way that poetry was portrayed as a way to slow down and escape from the chaos of everyday life. I think we need to start integrating this more into the curriculum for younger children. Even if kids aren't able to give a full fledged analysis on a poem, they are still able to describe a poems feeling in their own way. Poetry is extremely subjective to me and it can have benefits that extend far outside literary proficiency and right into our inner most thoughts about life.
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