{"id":53,"date":"2007-08-03T13:57:02","date_gmt":"2007-08-03T13:57:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/poetry-for-8th-graders"},"modified":"2016-10-02T10:12:45","modified_gmt":"2016-10-02T17:12:45","slug":"poetry-for-8th-graders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/poetry-for-8th-graders","title":{"rendered":"Poetry for 8th Graders"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just joined the teacher forums at A to Z Teacher Stuff<\/a>, where Koocat008 asks for suggestions for teaching 8th grade poetry<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 I gave a brief response on the forum, but here’s my longer response:<\/p>\n

“The Raven”<\/strong> by Edgar Allen Poe – My students love studying this, even if they’ve read it before.\u00c2\u00a0 I use Poe’s “Philosophy of Composition”<\/a> to help them understand one poet’s view of his craft.\u00c2\u00a0 In this essay, Poe explains how he creates a poem, and he uses “The Raven” as his example.\u00c2\u00a0 One of the extremely rare instances where a poet explains the meaning, symbolism and theme of his or her poem.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve prepared a four-page outline of the essay that you can download from Scribd<\/a> if you think it might be useful for you.<\/p>\n

“The Seven Ages of Man”<\/strong> from As You Like It<\/em> by William Shakespeare – I pair this dramatic monologue with the song “100 Years<\/a>” by Five for Fighting.\u00c2\u00a0 They complement each other well, and using the modern song helps to engage the students.<\/p>\n

“George Gray”<\/strong> by Edgar Lee Masters – This is a great poem to use to get students talking about their fears and ambitions.\u00c2\u00a0 If you use my Dead Poets Society Teaching Unit<\/a>, “George Gray” would fit right into it.<\/p>\n

“The Lady of Shallot”<\/strong> and “The Highwayman”<\/strong> – I play Loreena McKennit’s versions of these poems before we read them, and I use Waterhouse’s painting of the Lady of Shalott<\/a> to enhance their experience. The songs can be found on two of McKennit albums, The Book of Secrets<\/em><\/a> and The Visit<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

There are others that I teach, but these seem to resonate most with my eighth graders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just joined the teacher forums at A to Z Teacher Stuff, where Koocat008 asks for suggestions for teaching 8th grade poetry.\u00c2\u00a0 I gave a brief response on the forum, but here’s my longer...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[24],"tags":[316,349,347,104,348,344,346,254,343,342,225,341,345],"class_list":["post-53","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature","tag-alfred-lord-tennyson","tag-alfred-noyes","tag-as-you-like-it","tag-edgar-allen-poe","tag-edgar-lee-masters","tag-george-gray","tag-loreena-mckennit","tag-poetry","tag-the-highwayman","tag-the-lady-of-shallot","tag-the-raven","tag-the-seven-ages-of-man","tag-william-shakespeare"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pPveS-R","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":652,"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions\/652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}