Ch.4- Poetry

As a young child I disliked poetry very much. Even today I'm not that big into it. Reading this chapter made me realize that the reason I probably have such a negative about poetry is because I wasn't exposed to it very much in school and also because the atmosphere surrounding poetry lessons was never encouraged as much as other subjects from my teachers, and was never made very fun. I agree that there are important things that children can gain from reading poetry such as an increased vocabulary, creativity, and exposure to new writers as well as styles. Aside from maybe a project like a holiday poetry reading here and there in elementary school, I don't remember learning anything in depth or exploring different types of poems until was in middle school. I think that if my teachers in elementary school would have implemented some of the ideas explained in Ch.4 such as reading poems out loud as a class, acting out poems, or including other subjects into poetry such as science, I could have really gotten interested in poetry!
I really like how this book includes lots of examples of good pieces of children's poetry, studies about what types of poetry children like, how it impacts their learning, and also explains ideas on how to implement poetry into the classroom. It's a great step-by-step guide for future teachers. Back to Ch.4, I also made a note of the Joyful Noise book because I thought that sounded like a great tool to use when introducing poetry to a classroom. When I read the section about the different types of poetry, sadly, there were types that I hadn't heard about! I think that really indicates the lack of poetry in typical classrooms and I think that occurs because teachers know it's a difficult subject and assume students will be uninterested. However, thinking about poetry as word play and hearing the different activities brought up in this chapter makes me think that it poetry can't really be that bad. Lastly, I really liked that the authors encouraged teachers to address poetry as a new experience to use creativity and express oneself through words, rather than all about analyzing long, confusing poems, or finding the meaning of every line. This could be because the text book is more centered around younger ages, but I still appreciated the fact that they focused on poetry as another means for getting kids involved in reading, which is really the point after all.