School Prep: Poetry

[dropcap]O[/dropcap]nce upon a time there were Amazon Kindle editions of the AmblesideOnline poetry assignments, but Amazon has been difficult lately and those are not currently available. I’ve never used those, but I bring them up because they are the reason I’ve never mentioned here what I do to prepare for poetry. It seemed superfluous in a high tech world, I suppose.

Anyhow, my big secret is that I cut and paste the selections into a Word document, format it to two columns {unless the lines are very broad}, change the font to a reasonable size, and adjust any aesthetic issues I may have with how it looks. If my child is reading independently, I bother to go through and separate it into one week’s worth at a time because that works for us; it isn’t necessary, but I do it. Then, I print the thing out.

Oh.

And I staple the top left corner to keep it all together.

That’s about it.

My children read {or I read aloud, if necessary} the poems when they are assigned, but they are all kept in one place. I might give out a week at a time if the child is one who receives a weekly spreadsheet, while keeping the rest of the thing in my possession, if I’m working with the sort of child who needs me more. It varies by child, but the work is essentially the same: cut, paste, format, print.

To give a real example, yesterday I was prepping a bit for Term One of Year Three. The assigned poet is William Blake, and the selected poems are available on this page of the AO site.

So. I selected all and copied it. I pasted it into a Word document. I deleted all the ancillary website junk.

Etcetera, etcetera.

You get the drill.

For Year Three Term One, this became an eleven-page document.

Easy, peasy, as they say…

 

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