TEACHING POETRY IN HIGH SCHOOL

By Albert B. Somers. The teacher who wrote this plainspoken book loves poetry and has thought long and hard about how to teach poetry to ordinary kids so that, in the end, they too will love poetry. He presents five guidelines for choosing poems that students will actually enjoy and tells precisely where—outside the textbook—to look for such poems. He lists the contemporary poets who are most popular with teenagers. He suggests methods for teaching poetry through talking, performing, and writing; lays down nine guidelines for teaching form and technique; explains how to do assessment; and touches on methods for integrating poetry across the curriculum. Appendixes recommend anthologies, reference works, and media resources. Bibliography. NCTE. 219 pages. ©1999.