On Making Kids Memorize Poetry

 

  I loved having my students memorize poetry in my English classes, but this was the bane of existence, the great monster, the most horrible task, and it made me the most hated teacher of the moment – according to my students.

  My criteria for judging a student’s ability to memorize was as follows: I usually say to him: “Well, you learned your name, didn’t you?”  “You know your address and phone number, don’t you, and you are able to find your way home easily, aren’t you?”  If they can’t do these things, maybe they won’t be able to memorize your poetry segments.

  The usual response to this is: “Yea, but I’ve been doing this over and over again.”  This is where I hit them with my rational.  “Well, if you apply the same diligence to the poem I assign you, you will be able to memorize it as thoroughly as the other mental necessities of life.”

  You know, you’d think that asking a kid to memorize a short poem, or a short passage of literature was akin to him making some life-threatening move.  I’ve had kids stone-cold refuse to memorize a simple haiku, claiming they are mentally impaired – same ones that bop around the room to the current song lyrics.  I’ve had parents trap me in my room after school with questionable medical records “proving” that little Jerome cannot memorize anything the caliber of good literature because he was denied some oxygen in the birth canal – or he was traumatically impacted as a young child by an equally horrifying experience in elementary school – or he suffers from mental agitation which will not allow him to concentrate.

  Well, I usually still insisted that unless the student was confined to a hospital bed in a blank mental state (or couldn’t past my test above), he had to memorize the lines I assigned.  It’s funny because in the end 90% of the students did do the memorization – the others defaulted to a failing grade – and many of them were glad they did it after the recitations were completed.  In fact, many years later I have come upon some of my charges, and they have invariably said the “only” thing they remember (I hope not!) about my class was the poetry recitation they had to do.

  It takes work to memorize a poem – even for a “gifted” student.  Which leads me to the real reason many of my students resisted memorization:   They didn't suffer from ADD or DDT, they suffered from LAZY.  Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, someone was telling them they couldn’t memorize.  And that was fine with them.

  So, what’s the benefit of memorizing poetry?  Well, I’ve always felt that it is the best way to learn what a poem is all about.  Sure, you can study it, or do a cursory reading of it, but to “own” the poem (as some writers have suggested) you have to put the work into memorizing the poem.

This work invested in a poem is mental exercise, and scientists today are finding that this kind of exercise is great for keeping the mind in shape and staving off memory loss.  Not only that, but as you grab more firmly onto the poem, you learn the keenness of the poet in using words and devices like simile and metaphor, and you become very familiar with the ways in which words can intermingle to produce ideas.  This only comes with a firm, subconscious grasp of the lines.

  For teachers to have any luck with convincing their charges that memorization is possible, they should figuratively put their money where their mouth is.  I never assigned a recitation to my students unless I did it myself.  It was a task, with all the other work I had as a teacher, but it was well worth it when I was able to stand before my students and ask them to memorize a passage and then be able to recite it myself.  So, first rule.  Don’t ask your students to do something you wouldn’t (or don’t) do yourself.

  Memorization can be made fun, also.  Take, for example, the kid I mentioned earlier.  He was (along with many others) is able to quickly learn the lyrics of popular songs that bombard his mind daily.  Suggest that the students put the words to a tune in their heads – make a song and dance out of it.  Rhyming poems work well this way.

Building the Woods-- Free Program of the Month

     Fun to use and free from Baggetta_Ware this month.  Go to our main page www.baggetta.com to download.  Robert Frost's poem Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening is one popular poem often used for memorization.  Well our Windows PC program Building the Woods will get your students to master this poem from memory with little coaxing.  Place it on your Windows PC's in your room or in your lab and let your classes have a go at it.  It makes for a fun and educational project and can be used for special projects or just plain study.  It's for Windows PC, and it doesn't cost anything.  Just download from our main page: www.baggetta.com


Teacher Humor

Hank:  "Dad, can you write in the dark?"
Dad:   "I think so. What is it you want me to write?"
Hank: "Your name on this report card."

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The child comes home from his first day at school.
Mother asks, "What did you learn today?"
The kid replies, "Not enough. I have to go back tomorrow."

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A mom and dad were worried about their son not wanting to learn math at the school he was in, so they decided to send him to a Catholic school. After the first day of school, their son comes racing into the house, goes straight into his room and slams the door shut. Mom and dad are a little worried about this and go to his room to see if he is okay. They find him sitting at his desk doing his homework. The boy keeps doing that for the rest of the year. At the end of the year the son brings home his report card and gives it to his mom and dad. Looking at it they see under math an A+.

 

Mom and dad are very happy and ask the son, "What changed your mind about learning math?"

The son looked at mom and dad and said, "Well, on the first day when I walked into the classroom, I saw a guy nailed to the plus sign at the back of the room behind the teacher's desk and I knew they meant business."

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Teacher: Tim, you missed school yesterday, didn't you?
Tim: Not a bit.

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Famous Quotations
Since it is Carl Sandburg's birthday in January, here's a list of quotations he is known for.  Carl Sandburg is the great American poet also known for his biography of Abraham Lincoln.  
Drop by our main web page www.baggetta.com to get a new quote for each day.

"A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on."

"Valor is a gift. Those having it never know for sure whether they have it till the test comes. And those having it in one test never know for sure if they will have it when the next test comes. "

"Nothing happens unless first a dream. "

 

"I never made a mistake in grammar but once in my life and as soon as I done it I seen it."

"Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you. -Carl Sandburg."

"Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess what is seen during a moment."

"I've written some poetry I don't understand myself. "
 

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Using a Pop-Out Menu To Speed Up the Action
Often when I'm using MS Word, I'll need a section of the text to repeat in another part of the document.  As with just about all functions in word processing, there are several ways to  perform them, some are easier to use at times than others.  So it's a good idea to get a grasp on as many techniques as possible.  A good way to learn the various ways of doing things, without sitting down and doing a whole bunch at a time, is to occasionally pick one up and practice with it, as we are doing here. 
You can use the Menu bar at the top of the screen on your WP to do a Copy and Paste.  You can also use the Control Key plus the C and V keys respectively to accomplish the same task (why did they ever use the V key for Paste?).  A third way, which can be very hand is this.  To COPY your text, highlight it as usual, place the mouse pointer on the highlighted area and RIGHT click.  This produces a Pop-Out menu with the COPY and PASTE choices selectable.  This is much quicker than sliding up to the Menu bar or dropping the mouse and converting to keyboard antics.  Give it a try, if you are not familiar with it, and I think you will find it very easy to grasp this technique the next time you want to COPY and PASTE.