Poetry in the classroom

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Pedagogy, Literature Studies, grade: 2,0, LMU Munich (Institut für Anglistik), language: English, abstract: In general, poetry seems to be a fairly neglected topic in today's classrooms. Reasons for this may be multiple1 and it is probably difficult to determine universally valid explanations. It does not make a difference whether it is poetry in the mother tongue or poetry in a foreign language; it just seems that poetry in general does not seem to be very popular. Skipping through the current schoolbooks the impression occurs that poetry only plays a subordinate role. Also, when under time pressure and the necessity to drop certain topics, poetry seems to be among the first ones to be dropped. The question arises whether this is due to teachers who never found access to poetry? The extra effort it might take to prepare for a poetry lesson? Or is it lacking courage to approach a topic that seems to be unpopular? It is up to teachers to either inspire or discourage pupils when it comes to poetry. This inspiration or discouragement may last a lifetime. Many pupils probably consider poetry as 'un-cool'. But in the time of events like literature and poetry slams, which are highly enjoyed by many pupils and students, it should be worth re-thinking the attitude about poetry and to bring poetry to the classrooms. With this paper I would like to show approaches, activities and ideas how teachers can make poetry more popular in the classroom.