Dear colleague,

Why teach poetry?

With Literacy and Numeracy Week (29 August–4 September) and International Literacy Day (8 September) coming up, let’s stop and consider one of the great forms of literature: poetry.

Beautifully crafted or playfully rhymed, poetry offers the opportunity to experiment with language.

In both performance and creation, poetry can touch our senses, our emotions and linger in our memories.

How many of you remember your childhood nursery rhymes, or have a favourite verse that has glued itself to your memory?

Consider the rhythm of a ballad, the sparkle of a limerick or the beat of a rap.

Poetry provides a platform on which to build performance and practice oral reading skills.

Poetry also offers the writer a way to connect with others, to synthesis ideas in a few well-chosen words, or shape to a disciplined form such as a haiku.

The Australian Curriculum: English describes opportunities to explore poetry with students from the Foundation years. Poetry can be used as a brilliant stimulus for the Arts in drama, the visual arts and in dance. It can be enhanced using sound and images through technology. Poetry can also be used in history, to connect students with the past in a way that is personal and direct. Poetry from other countries, translated or in the original language, grants a perspective of a life or a place different to one’s own.

This week, why not challenge your students to explore their world through the lens of a poet?

Looking for poetry in Scootle? Try these terms: Metre(Poetry); Narrative poetry, Shape poetry; Lyric Poetry, Nursery Rhymes, Poets.

Suggested Resources

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Playing in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, August – September 2016.

Visit the Bell Shakespeare website for details.

Upcoming Events