Texas Poetry Reflection

Texas Poetry in the High School Classroom This semester, I had the unique opportunity to implement the Texas Poet Laureate Series into the English curriculum at Lone Oak High School. I teach 10th grade English, and a portion of the objectives call for the students to be exposed to poetic devices and figurative language. So, I thought that introducing the Texas Poet Laurette series would not only cover those objectives, but will capture the attention of my students. Lone Oak ISD is a recognized school district located about 60 miles east of Dallas. The one aspect I like most about my job is that the teachers are not required to adhere to a prescribed curriculum, which means we can teach what we want as long as the objectives (TEKS) are met. This makes it very nice because we have more autonomy over our teaching than most school districts, and it also allows for a bit creativity for the students’ learning experience. Not having a prescribed curriculum has allowed me the …show more content…
Each group in the class was given a Texas Poet Laureate book to work with. I ask the students to look through the book and get a feel for the poet and what types of poetry he/she writes. Each group had to pick out two poems to analyze. One student per group recorded the answers from a list of questions found in Perrine's Literature Structure, Sound, and Sense on page 641 in a chapter devoted to the analyzation of poetry. Some of the questions are: “Who is the speaker? What kind of person is the speaker? Is there an identifiable audience for the speaker? What can we know about it (her, him, or them)? What is the occasion? State the central idea or theme of the poem in a sentence. Point out examples of metaphor, simile, personification, and metonymy, and explain their appropriateness” (641). This is just a few out of a list of twenty one questions. This exercise lasted for about three