Teach-Reading-and-Writing-Issue-21

T E ACH I NG T E CHN I QUE S OF POETRY We can get our teaching ‘just right’, says Jonny Walker G o with me on this... As teachers of poetry, we are a bit like Goldilocks. Not because we commit crimes of trespass and theft, but because, just like that flaxen intruder, we are searching for something that feels ‘just right’. Poetry teaching is a game of balance. On one end of our pedagogical seesaw, we have the desire for children to know, to comprehend, to analyse and perhaps to memorise poetry. We want them to understand poetic devices: what they do, and how they do it. On the opposite end, we have the desire for children to feel something through poetry, to use it to know themselves differently, to leave their own mark on the page and to create something meaningful. Too much weight on the first side, and children miss that chance to see poetry, language and writing as a place of self-expression, as something alive that can do things for them. But make the opposite side too heavy, and poetry becomes just the shapeless transcription of whatever thoughts pop into pupils’ heads. And then there’s us, bumbling wildly back and forth, trying to maintain the balance. This, friends, is teaching: making sure the porridge is neither too hot nor too cold – getting it ‘just right’. Balancing theory and practice Theory needs practice, and practice needs theory. Knowing something about poetry and feeling something about poetry are not separate processes. Each feeds the other. Imagine two classes of eight-year-olds are learning to ride bikes. The teacher of the first class decides the children should learn through theory. Pupils watch videos of people cycling. They learn the names and functions of the handlebars, the gears, the chain, the saddle and the spokes. A bicycle is brought in for them to look at and draw. This teacher says to the children: “I love cycling children’s legs are a blur as they go faster and faster. “Please clap for Karolina and Abdulkarim, who managed to get to the bottom without falling off. Perhaps we can try and do it a bit more like them when we try tomorrow? And please stop crying, you’ve got a plaster now!” The same tool would have benefited both these teachers and their unfortunate classes: stabilisers. Pupils would have been able to pedal with abandon, safe in the knowledge that they weren’t about to collapse into a heap on the floor. The stabilisers on a writing lesson allow the children to apply what they know, and embrace the beautiful risk of writing. They can maintain their balance, safe in the knowledge that they won’t completely miss the mark. and I hope you will too.” But once they actually hop onto the saddles, they quickly find themselves on the concrete weeping over their grazed knees. Knowing what handlebars are doesn’t necessarily help you to steer. The teacher of the second class thinks the children should learn through practice alone, so off to the top of a hill everyone goes. Bums are on saddles before a word is spoken; it’s one gentle push and down they go. Nobody knows that the thing near their hands is called ‘the brake’, and so they cannot stop. The www.teachwire.net | 35 “If you limit one aspect of pupils’ writing, liberate another” The pilfered porridge