Poetry For Teaching and Learning Writing

This paper argues that poetry has a crucial role in learning reading and writing. Poetry allows higher order thinking, feelings, senses, creativity, language, words, style, music and rhythm to work in conjunction as children are involved in the process of reading and writing. Although poetry is very effective, little attention is given to it within the curriculum. Nevertheless, this genre “offers many benefits and should be part of every teacher’s daily repertoire” (Roe and Ross, 2006:40). This paper suggests various instructional practices of poetry writing for teachers who would like to see their students discover the power of language, and cultivate their emotions and thoughts. Example activities and students’ work provide models for utilizing poetry in the classroom.