Allen-Chapter 4

I believe Allen is right on point when he said to have children bring in their favorite songs to work with poetry. Btw...I love writing poetry! Haha. Music has been the center of my life since I was old enough to communicate. My parents had me enrolled in piano, violin, and flute lessons. Dance class, acting class, and vocal lessons. I can never get enough music in my life! Everyone has a favorite song...even if they do not like music. Music can produce emotions that other things can not. And as teachers using the lyrics of their favorite song we can show them that songs are just like poetry in a sense. In Dr. Compano's class we have went through poetry a few times, and what I really am going to remember from that lesson is that he would read the poem to us out loud, then we would disect the poem so we had a good understand of it, then he would tell us to write our own poem. But the kicker is that there was no requirements or structure for the poem. It was just a poem about say...a time you did something you knew you shouldn't of done. This is wonderful!!! I remember being in school and we would learn what a haiku was, then we had to create one, no ideas were given, it was just, "ok class" now write a haiku the way we just learned it. That is so limiting to your students, well...I know it was to me, and I enjoyed poetry...except when it was done in this manner.