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markfeltskog's review against another edition
Education schools ought to make this required reading for anyone wishing to teach English in the primary grades.
emmkayt's review against another edition
4.0
I was excited to find my library system still has an old copy of this book. My mother had one in our house when I was growing up, and I was obsessed with it. Reading it now, probably close to 40 years later, I found some of the lines and photos were still familiar. Serendipitously, I also read as part of the same batch of library books Ninth Street Women, a tome about the art world in New York in the 40s and 50s, in which I unexpectedly found author Kenneth Koch hanging around with the beat poets and Jackson Pollock.
The first part of the book is a short essay about Koch teaching poetry in the New York public school system in the 60s, what worked and what didn’t. The rest of the book consists of his students’ poems, with a bit of explanation of the themes and his methods. Not necessarily ground-breaking methods with modern eyes, but joyful, non-judgemental, and respectful. I got a kick out of some of the recurring themes or more startling images, as well as some of the references that were more of a time capsule. So nice to rediscover this.
The first part of the book is a short essay about Koch teaching poetry in the New York public school system in the 60s, what worked and what didn’t. The rest of the book consists of his students’ poems, with a bit of explanation of the themes and his methods. Not necessarily ground-breaking methods with modern eyes, but joyful, non-judgemental, and respectful. I got a kick out of some of the recurring themes or more startling images, as well as some of the references that were more of a time capsule. So nice to rediscover this.
iymain's review against another edition
4.0
Hmm. Well, I've never been much for poetry. I just don't "get it." It's like any kind of art, I suppose. It's in the eye of the beholder and all that. However, this book actually gave me a little bit of a thrill. For a moment I had the urge to try some of the exercises. I felt as if I just might be close to getting the point behind poetry. (I'm still not sure why it has to be poetry and not prose, though--aside from random line divisions, they're awfully similar.)
This book is written by a poet who becomes a guest teacher in several classrooms. I love how he discovers the stages of development through his teaching and reading his students' writing. The growing self consciousness of his older students made the assignments they completed distinctly different by those of first graders writing to the same concept.
There are several great ideas for introducing poetry to classrooms. I liked the idea that poetry should be alive and children should feel competent to write it. I also liked how he explained cliche word choice by making inventive language seem so new and exciting. I also thought his ideas about how to experience children's writing was great. Basically, don't be judgmental, but when something amazing appears in a student's writing, praise it and explore what works in that turn of phrase with the rest of the class.
Koch's explanation and use of collaborative poetry is interesting. I'd always thought that it seemed like idea infringement when one kid would take another's idea and minimally tweak it and call it their own. K indicates that this is almost like riffing in jazz and encourages this kind of shared work. I see his point.
There are lots of great ideas for encouraging creative thinking in this book. It's kind of a "how to"guide with lots of examples.
On that topic, though, I must say, the hands off approach to kids expressing their inner feelings is no longer possible in today's world. Plenty of these poems mention death, killing and hate. There's no way a kid could write that now without a teacher having to flag a guidance counselor. Not sure that that's necessarily a bad thing, either... Funny to see these elementary school kids expressing their early indoctrination into sexism so casually, too. "I wish each man had ten beautiful girls" then there would be world peace (or something to that effect). Huh? Other poems were written by girls who long to be beautiful so they can have power over the men/boys in their lives. Wowza. The amazing thing is, at the oldest, these kids are 13 years old! Copywrite 1970. We've come a long way, Baby?
I like the ideas for encouraging writing and I thought the student examples were interesting, but perhaps could have been edited down to about half as many. But maybe the point is that with children's poetry writing there should be no editing... hmm.
This book is written by a poet who becomes a guest teacher in several classrooms. I love how he discovers the stages of development through his teaching and reading his students' writing. The growing self consciousness of his older students made the assignments they completed distinctly different by those of first graders writing to the same concept.
There are several great ideas for introducing poetry to classrooms. I liked the idea that poetry should be alive and children should feel competent to write it. I also liked how he explained cliche word choice by making inventive language seem so new and exciting. I also thought his ideas about how to experience children's writing was great. Basically, don't be judgmental, but when something amazing appears in a student's writing, praise it and explore what works in that turn of phrase with the rest of the class.
Koch's explanation and use of collaborative poetry is interesting. I'd always thought that it seemed like idea infringement when one kid would take another's idea and minimally tweak it and call it their own. K indicates that this is almost like riffing in jazz and encourages this kind of shared work. I see his point.
There are lots of great ideas for encouraging creative thinking in this book. It's kind of a "how to"guide with lots of examples.
On that topic, though, I must say, the hands off approach to kids expressing their inner feelings is no longer possible in today's world. Plenty of these poems mention death, killing and hate. There's no way a kid could write that now without a teacher having to flag a guidance counselor. Not sure that that's necessarily a bad thing, either... Funny to see these elementary school kids expressing their early indoctrination into sexism so casually, too. "I wish each man had ten beautiful girls" then there would be world peace (or something to that effect). Huh? Other poems were written by girls who long to be beautiful so they can have power over the men/boys in their lives. Wowza. The amazing thing is, at the oldest, these kids are 13 years old! Copywrite 1970. We've come a long way, Baby?
I like the ideas for encouraging writing and I thought the student examples were interesting, but perhaps could have been edited down to about half as many. But maybe the point is that with children's poetry writing there should be no editing... hmm.
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