NCTE References

As Lee Odell explains in “Assessing Thinking: Glimpsing a Mind at Work,” “[W]e continually find ourselves making value judgments about students’ work . . . . Where we run into trouble is in trying to articulate these value judgments, especially when we try to explain to students why one piece of writing meets a certain standard and another does not.

Odell, Lee. “Assessing Thinking: Glimpsing a Mind at Work.” Evaluating Writing: The Role of Teachers’ Knowledge about Text, Learning, and Culture. Ed. Charles R. Cooper and Lee Odell. Urbana: NCTE, 1999. 7–22.

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Many of us wonder where we should begin poetry studies. Begin the year with poems to which students can personally relate—poems about going to school. Furthermore, rather than starting with the scary, technical elements, give students frequent exposure to poetry and personal writing experiences all year long. In considering such approaches, we might all be able to dismantle fears and poetic phobias from the first day of school.

Poetry, Schmoetry! A Potpourri of Resources to Generate Enthusiasm for the Genre
By Colleen A. Ruggiere Editor, Boardman High School, Boardman, Ohio
English Journal Vol. 96, No. 1 September 2006, Page 115

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…a daily dose of poetry would be a potent elixir for students, and that genre would become a force in students’ lives if they were given the opportunity to make sense of it for themselves.

By Tamara L. C. Van Wyhe, Copper River School District, Glennallen, Alaska
English Journal Vol. 96, No. 1 September 2006, Page 15

As a teacher, I discovered poetry to be magic in many ways. It offered brevity, allowing a quick reading and discussion of a complete piece of text as a way to begin a class period. It offered variety, allowing students to discover a vast array of subjects and styles. It offered a myriad of companion pieces to the novels and nonfiction texts we encountered. It offered a powerful tool for teaching word choice, fluency, and the impact of conventions. It offered opportunities to investigate issues of speaker and audience. It offered questions with no answers, invitations to support assertions based on text, and it helped students understand what mood and tone and emotion really mean when it comes to writing. It offered them models to try on and wear around for a while, eventually helping them to tailor their writing styles. It offered students a genre for documenting their lives, one poetic snapshot at a time.

By Tamara L. C. Van Wyhe, Copper River School District, Glennallen, Alaska
English Journal Vol. 96, No. 1 September 2006, Page 15