How should poetry be taught in an English class? How are reading and interpretative skills best developed? By way of lectures? By unstructured discussions? Or by structured activities? What counts as explanation in literary study?
These were some of the issues in my mind each time I taught a poem to my students. I was desperate to see how in my own teaching situation I could preferably adapt the teaching of a poem to a method that was both learner-centered and that could also combine language skills with the teaching of poetry in a way that would have immediate practical applications in the teaching of English in the classrooms.
With these issues in mind I decided on a Class Quiz for teaching poetry to students of Class XI.
The Lesson was conducted in three stages.
The first stage consisted of a warming-up activity to stimulate the Learners’ curiosity regarding the poem.
The second stage was that of the Quiz. The Quiz consisted of four rounds of activities pertaining to true/false, vocabulary, complete the following, rhyming words, questions etc. The fourth round of the Quiz had open-ended questions for each of the teams. Such questions were included to initiate the Learners into an interpretation and assimilation of ideas expressed by the poet.
Finally, the third stage was the feedback stage.
The Quiz was an active, imaginative and innovative activity containing all ingredients for effective teaching of poetry. The aim was to help the Learner move beyond the domain of language learning per se into domains of issues that would engage the whole person of the Learner.