In this article, the author relates her teaching experience with seventh and eighth graders using poetry activities, and she describes how she teaches poetry by using "published" poems and by engaging the students in classroom activities. Though students in seventh grade usually have knowledge of poetic conventions, the author takes time to review…

The principle of empathic learning (involving activities that help students feel what it is to be like someone else) can be used to teach poetry, a material about which students have strong prejudices, and an activity they cannot imagine themselves ever doing or being interested in. First, students are presented with the conception that people…