Teaching Unseen Poetry

I started teaching my very first very first upper secondary Literature class this year, and it’s been an interesting experience so far. I started the year with unseen poetry, and I used many pictures and advertisements to get students to think about what it means to be able to think critically. We broke down into smaller bites the meanings (and hidden meanings) of different advertisements, and then students had to look for one advertisement of their own and do a critical analysis of it as an assignment.

For poetry, I used a number of songs to teach the different devices – “End of the World” and “Firework” were used to teach sound devices and imagery respectively. I tried my best to break it down so that students were able to understand how the devices worked at their most basic then link it to effect and poet’s intention. From the song/picture/sound, I would move on to lines/stanzas, then to full poems. Students were able to follow and have a better grasp of the concept this way. I really hope that through this course I would learn skills and strategies to enhance my students’ learning and to make Literature meaningful for them.