In Keeping With Yesterday's Post . . .TEACHING POETRY. A Worthwhile Endeavor.

 

Songs My Teacher Taught Me       

by Anthony Consiglio.

A series of three lesson plans intended to guide students 

through approximately one month of poetry study.

found at: poets.org.

WHY?

Reading poetry can be a great way to improve your writing skills. The principles of poetry can be applied to nearly every kind of writing you do.

* from: Learning From Poetry, on DailyWritingTips, by Erin

Myth No. 1: Poetry is painful to memorize.  - It is not at all painful. Just do a line or two a day.

Myth No. 2: There isn’t enough room in your memory to store a lot of poetry.  - Bad analogy. Memory is a muscle, not a quart jar.

Myth No. 3: Everyone needs an iPod.  - You do not need an iPod. Memorize poetry instead. 

* from: Got Poetry? in The New Your Times. by Jim Holt.

  

THIS REMINDS ME OF THE ENDING OF FAHRENHEIT 451.

 

You know. 

Where they have all memorized a book to keep it alive.

pass on a poem

learning poetry by heart

Long before I could read to myself, my younger sister and I were familiar with The Child’s Garden of Verses, Lewis Carroll’s “Hunting of the Snark” and Edward Lear’s Nonsense Songs and Verses.   I suspect that I would now be diagnosed as dyslexic - I couldn’t read till I was past seven, so if I was to hang onto these favourite poems I had to know them by heart. [...]

Now, as I repeat those long-ago-learnt verses to myself at moments of anxiety or stress, sorrow or elation, or just to alleviate the plain ordinary boredom of traffic jams and bus queues, I am more than grateful to those who enabled me to acquire such a rich store, which will last me as long as my memory does.

And I remember too the account by Evgenia Ginsberg in her book Into the Whirlwind of how the poetry she had learnt as a child had enabled her to endure the terrible years in Stalin’s Gulag, and indeed, when in solitary confinement, had, she thought, actually saved her sanity.   Most of us, please God, are unlikely to suffer such torment, but I still think it is a pity that getting children to learn by heart is now dismissed as “learning by rote”, and dropped from the curriculum. " 

 

PHALANGES, what a cool word!

Some people love mind maps. This one is interesting, and if you follow the link, each of its little phalanges is clickable. It's a handy reference in this form.


This is its companion, (of course).



ATHERTON J S (2009) Learning and Teaching; Contents [On-line] UK: Available: http://www.learningandteaching.info/teaching/contents.htm