In this issue Russell Stannard is in a poetic frame of mind.
A number of readers have recently asked me for a list of poetry sites. Poetry is something I never use in class and never read myself, so it was quite a challenge. Having spent several hours finding sites, I have been inspired to use a few of the poems I came across in my own classes.
This site has a ‘Read them and Rate them’ section where you will find a wide selection of amusing and interesting poems.
Activity 1
Choose a poem with several verses and a clear rhyme scheme. Put the students into small groups and give them a copy of the poem, but with the last line of each verse erased. Ask the students to guess what they think the missing lines might be. To make it a little easier, leave the first verse complete so that they can see which lines rhyme.
Then get one student from each group to come to the board and write up their suggested last line for each verse. This allows the other students to read what each group has put. Obviously you need a fairly big board to do this but with the poem I chose, each final line was only five or six words long, so it wasn’t too difficult. Finally, show the students the complete poem and let them compare it with their versions.
Activity 2
For this substitution game, which I played with a class of upperintermediate level children, I used the poem Tea at My Grans by Bob Woodroffe.
First I had some sandwiches, Some cheese, some egg, some ham A bowl of cherry trifle And loads of bread and jam. Then I ate a chocolate cake (The biggest one you’ve seen) Some sausage rolls and donuts And then I turned quite green. ‘Oh dear! Oh dear! Oh deary me! Sick?’ enquired my Gran. ‘No, thank you very much,’ I said. ‘I’ve eaten all I can.’
Write the poem on the board and highlight the lines that rhyme. Put the students in groups and tell them to choose a line and rewrite it in any way they like. The only rule is that if they choose one of the highlighted lines, their new line must still rhyme. Tell each group in turn to come to the board, wipe out a line and write their new one in. They then rewrite another line. By the end of two rounds, the poem will be completely different.
My students were a bit confused at first, but they came up with some great ideas!
Activity 3
Again, choose a suitable poem. One with several verses and a clear rhyme scheme works well. I used A Present for My Teacher by Kenn Nesbitt and Linda Knaus.
I gave a Christmas present to my teacher, Mrs Rose. I wrapped it by myself with pretty paper and some bows. Poor Mrs Rose was horrified! I often make mistakes, but I don’t understand it. Doesn’t everyone like snakes?
Cut the poem up so that each line is on a different piece of paper. Give the students the first line of each verse plus the remaining lines all jumbled up. Ask them to decide which lines go in which verse and then to work out the order.
Quite a few of my students got the whole thing correct!
Here are some other useful poetry sites:
http://cmgm.stanford.edu/~ahmad/poetry.html
Here you will find translations of poetry from all over the world including China and Arabic-speaking countries. Some of them are great and very short – and therefore ideal for low-level classes.
This site has a lot of the sort of material I like using in class. The ideas here are wonderful for younger learners, though you could easily use them with adults too.
http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/ indexauthors.html
This has a massive list of authors and their works. It will be handy for reference work, and some teachers may also find it useful.
Russell Stannard is a lecturer in multimedia at Westminster University. He also teaches Spanish and English at Sutton Adult Education College, UK, and he has an extensive writing and publishing background.
This article first appeared in English Teaching Professional, Issue 25, 2002