the matter of metre

So I don’t know if the rest of you poetry teachers have experienced this, but I would like to propose Parrish’s Poetry law #3, which states:

The degree to which a student wants to write poetry that rhymes will be match by their insensibility to metre.

I have spent many, well, at least 10 years trying to figure out how to teach students to hear stress and be able to understand syllabic count and weight. Of course, the best way to do it would be to get into a situation where we could program a computer voice synthesizer. But such is not currently my lot. Hrmph.

No fear! Last semester, I tried something that worked. By god it worked.

So I offer it to you.

1) Assemble a goodly list of similarly themed words. I use my trusty list of 300 different words to describe movement.

2) Distribute said list along with small rectangles of paper, three different colours.

3) Assign a colour, let’s say blue, to words of one syllable. Have students work in groups and write one syllable words on these papers. It’s important to do this work in groups and give them time. I spent some time today discusses whether or not the word “flail” had one or two syllables. The student was hearing the dipthong, and there really is a second sound there. You have to be slow with this or they will start to distrust their own ears.

4) Have students write two syllable words on another colour ( Yellow), and three syllable words on the third colour (lavender).

5) Explain the idea of stressed and unstressed syllables by examining the two syllable words.

6) Clap some simple rhythms to the students and have them clap back to you.

7) then tell them they are going to write the next rhythm you clap with the words they have,

I always start with

TA  TA TA TA

Ti Ti  Ti Ti  Ti Ti  TA.

Sorry. this is my ancient Orff lessons coming through. I’ll look up the poetry language for these metres later and add it on.

I do this rhythm for them a couple times, and then write it on the board using music notation for rhythm. It’s what I know.

They then assemble the lines.

This is where the colours are useful, because you can tell from a distance which group is having trouble.

Using my colours, you should see:

blue blue blue blue

yellow yellow yellow blue

Once all groups have got their lines, perform them together. Have everyone in the class clap the rhythm together, then point to a group, and without missing a beat, they say their lines. Then clap the rhythm again, and point to the next group. Repeat. Rinse. repeat.

When we did this today in writers’ craft, it produced an audible, “OH!”

They heard how the words produce the same rhythm that the clapping does.

You wouldn’t think that a group of kids who grew up on rap had to be taught this stuff… It’s in there, but for some reason so many of them can’t or don’t access it.