“Poetry is the lava of the imagination whose eruption prevents an earthquake”
Lord Byron
Reading, writing and listening to poetry helps us learn about the world, about ourselves and about the power and potential of language. Sounds, images and words artfully converge inviting us to think uncommon thoughts about common things, to discover strangeness behind patterns of familiarity and to explore reality in surprisingly fresh new ways.
In this course, teachers will:
* Explore the power of poetry in developing children’s literacy and sparking their creative imagination.
* Learn about different types of poetic forms and explore devices that make a poem work; from choice of words and use of imagery to nuances of tone and meaning.
* Look closely at a careful selection of poems to evaluate suitability and teaching potential in specific classroom situations.
* Discover ways to help scaffold students’ literary interpretation by helping them make meaningful life-to-text connections.
* Learn ways to build up a positive poetry classroom environment to encourage children’s involvement in language exploration and enable their self-expression in creative poetry writing.
* Increase their awareness of which kind of poems they find most moving and amazing so as to share with their children those they are most enthusiastic about, as enthusiasm about poems is catchy, so, as children’s laureate Michael Rosen says, teachers need to be warned against thinking of poems as medicine – “not very nice, but good for you!”
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Time for T.A.L.E. 