Poetry Out Loud: Reading, Reciting, and Responding to Poetry

Poetry Out Loud is a roadmap for teaching close readings of poetry and having students analyze the knowledge gleaned from those readings. Students meet dead poets, live poets, old poets, young poets, black poets and white poets as they explore what poetry is and why it’s important to hear poetry read out loud. By consistently hearing poetry read out loud with tonal shifts, the reader can share in the tumultuous journey of a narrative of emotions commonly found in poetry. It is a very personal and deeply intimate experience to be drawn into a writer’s consciousness as they craft condensed text to reveal something profound or puzzling! Whatever the writer’s intent, the close reader of poetry is forever changed as they share in a journey to gain deeper understanding of form, words, phrases, and stanzas, as well as voice, tone, mood, and figurative language. The concluding part of this unit is a spoken word café where students will synthesize everything they have learned and incorporate their knowledge in a poem they have written to be performed.