Things to Consider when Teaching Poetry for ESL

Poetry as I said before, is a good time to get your students to express themselves. If you plan your unit right, you can maximize the results from your students. Here is a sample unit plan.

Week 1:
Day 1 - Biography Poems
Day 2 - Color Poems
Day 3 - Acrostic Poems
Day 4 - Dictionary Poems
Day 5 - Concrete Poems
*homework - 2 poems a day

Week 2:
Day 1 - I Remember ... (every line starts with "I Remember")
Day 2 - Diamante (contrasting 2 opposite items)
Day 3 - Free Choice
Day 4 - Free Choice
Day 5 - Free Choice
*day 3 - 5 students read poems to find inspiration
*homework - 2 poems a day

Week 3: Create Anthology
Day 1 - Design Front Cover, Blurb on the back, Dedication
Day 2 - Table of Contents (students decide which poems to include and the order)
Day 3 - Write Poems and Draw Illustrations
Day 4 - Write Poems and Draw Illustrations
Day 5 - Publishing Party (students share out their poems and celebrate the work they have done)

Of course this time line can be altered to suit your classroom needs. There are a few things to remember when teaching poetry.

1.) Expression - Challenge students to dig deep. Instead of writing roses are red, lets make them think about a topic they are interested in (ie: sports, school, life, homework, etc.). We want to get them to express themselves with the English they have acquired throughout the year.

2.) Freedom - Give them the choice to write about what they want to write about. When your students are inspired to write about something let them run with it and experiment.

I hope you enjoyed the last couple posts about teaching poetry. If you need more suggestions feel free to email me.

Color and Dictionary Poems in ESL

Color poems are the next poems that I introduce to my students. This is another type of poem that is easy for the students to understand and reproduce one of their own. Color poems can be surface level or it can be very deep. When teaching color poems explain to the students that they can write about things that are the color, but what we are trying to do is describe colors in creative ways. Here are some examples of my students work.

Red is fire.
Red is love.
Red is passion.
Red is my love.
-by Wendy (age 11, living in the US for 2 years)

Black is like the night.
Black is like the dark.
Black is burned cookies.
Black is me.
-by Fernando (age 13, living in the US for 19 months)

Dictionary Poems are fun, but can often be challenging. Before class you need to copy a page from the dictionary. I use a dictionary that gives the word, the defintion, a sentence and a picture. Give each student a page of the dictionary and instruct them to write a poem using at least 7 of the words from that page. Do the first one together as a class, the teacher needs to guide the process. First make a list of the words you know and think you could use in the poem. Then think aloud with the students and write a poem with the whole class on chart paper. Then give the students another page from the dictionary and have them create their own.

Dictionary Poems:

I wish that in winter
I going to be a winner
with a wonderful smile.
-by Claudia (age 13, living in the US for almost 2 years)

I wish to be with my wolf
but one woman take my wonderful wolf.
-by Daniela (age 13, living in the US for almost 2 years)

Try to use these poems in you class, you will be surpried with how expressive your students can be!

Poetry Month in ESL

April is Poetry Month and this is a perfect time to take advantage of all the benefits that poetry has for our ESL students. Poetry is a very powerful tool for ESL because it provides the students with structure, rhythm and rhyme.

I start each unit with introducing my students to many different types of poems that they will be able to recreate with little difficulty, then we move into more complex issues.

Here is how I start the unit: Biography, Color, Acrostic, Dictionary and Concrete.
Biography Poems are about the author. In this blog I am going to focus on Biography Poems. I am going to give you a few examples of my students work.

I am a boy.
I am little.
I am beautiful.
I am intelligent.
I am smart.
I am from Ecuador
I am the best.
I want to be a great man.
-by Diego (age 12, been in the US for 9 months)

Wendy
Beautiful, shine, smart
Sister of Sharon
Who is a good friend and a good student
Who loves her family and she love to help the people
Who fears monster, and some people
Who finished with her boyfriends
Who wants to be a doctor
Born in Puerto Rico and living in New York
Santos
-by Wendy (age 11, been in the US for 2 years)

Before my students wrote these poems, I gave them examples of each poem and they wrote their own version. The first biography poem, "I am", needs to have 7 sentences starting with I am, the last sentence starts with I want to be.

The next poem has a very specific format. It is very important to explain what each line means and what is required for each line. Some students will not understand what an adjective is but if you ask them to describe themselves they will understand. So we need to break it down for them.
Line 1 - First name
Line 2 - Three adjectives that describe the person
Line 3 - Important relationship (mother of ... son of)
Line 4 - Two or three things, people, or ideas that the person loves
Line 5 - Three feelings the person has experienced
Line 6 - Three fears the person has experienced
Line 7 - Accomplishments
Line 8 - Two or three things the person wants to see happen or wants to experience
Line 9 - Where the person lives
Line 10 - Last Name

Poetry can be done thorough out the year, and should be a time for your ESL students to express themselves. Stay tuned I will be posting more examples and student work.