10 Weeks to Writing Good and Great Poetry – A Free Course
Are you looking for a Christian poetry course for your high school student? A course that will help them learn about writing poetry themselves? A program that will take them from whatever place they are at in writing poetry and guide them into deeper, fuller expression?
Poetry can be a tricky subject for which to find a curriculum. There are many courses that teach about poetry: identifying structure and form, giving examples of rhyme and meter. These courses are valuable for learning the elements of poetry, but they naturally focus on understanding poetry far more than on writing poetry.
Content Affects Worldview
And unlike a math course, for instance, a poetry curriculum has an element of content for every example of structure. This means that every time your student learns about rhyme or metre, they are also unconsciously listening to the poet’s worldview. Sheep Among Wolves is offering the Good and Great Poetry course to help you teach your high school and pre–high school students the beauty and power of writing great poetry, within the safe environment of good poetry.
What is the point of 10 Weeks to Writing Good and Great Poetry?
Sheep Among Wolves’ 10 Weeks to Writing Good and Great Poetry was created to help young poets learn about writing great poetry using examples that are “simple concerning evil.” This FREE 10-week course takes a look at some fundamental elements of poetical structure as well as the themes and subject-matter which really make up the soul of a poem. The program uses only hymns as the examples of the topics covered, which allows your students to learn about poetry while reinforcing the godly worldview that is so important.
Unlike courses that spend a large portion of time explaining technical terms and looking at different structural classifications of poetry, we will focus on overarching principles and guidelines for writing poems that are both good and great.
This provides a valuable practical application for what the students learn, and allows the course to be very versatile. Understanding how to choose meters that will give the greatest scope to an idea will be more useful down the road than being able to tell the difference between technical terms like iambic and trochaic.
How Old Does the Student Need to Be?
Our Good and Great Poetry course is intended for high school and pre–high school students who have an interest in poetry. Of course, much depends on the individual student, but older students will have a higher comprehension and appreciation of the subjects we will discuss, and will be better able to apply what they learn. If you have a younger child who is used to reading and understanding subject-matter which is a good deal above their grade-level, then by all means give it a try! Children can often understand more than we give them credit for, and there is no harm in making the attempt.
What Does the Course Include?
This 10 week program includes the following modules:
- What is Poetry?
- Why First Lines Can Make or Break a Poem
- Finding Your “Thesis Statement”
- Effects of Metre on Poem Tone
- The Role of Rhyming Patterns in Creating Mood
- You Mean There’s a Word-Limit on Poetry?
- Creating Impressions Through Formal or Informal Language
- Four Poem Themes and How They Work
- Powerful Concluding Lines
- Making Good Poems Great
Each module looks at a different aspect of poetry, and explains how or why using this technique allows us to write better poems. Wherever there are examples of different devices or concepts, we have used hymns that display good poetry while we discuss great poetry. At the end of each lesson there is an activity to put into practice the material covered. We have also included an example of each activity, so that your students will have a good idea of how to accomplish each task. It might make them feel better to know that I’m not asking anything of them which I haven’t done myself!
This 10 Weeks to Writing Good and Great Poetry course requires virtually no daily teacher involvement. Of course, you might like to look over the lesson before handing it to your child, but that is just about all you will have to do! Because the course is about improvement and not information, there are no test questions which you will need to mark. The idea is that the student will learn to critique and improve their own poems, rather than passing a test at the end.
How Do You Use This Course with Other English Programs?
Because this course looks at some basic and fundamental principles for writing poetry, it would be quite compatible with other English or poetry courses. The lessons taught here could be easily applied to more specific assignments in another curriculum. If your child is asked to write a sonnet or some other kind of poem in your base course, it would be helpful for them to understand that specific ideas are more suited to particular styles.
On the other hand, if you don’t intend to have any other poetry course, the activities at the end of each module are designed to put each lesson to a practical use. The great object is to get your child thinking about what they have learned, and how they can use it on a daily basis, as they explore techniques for writing good and great poetry.
Truly, 10 Weeks to Writing Good and Great Poetry is a very versatile course!
How To Sign Up
All ten poetry lessons can be found by clicking on the Poet’s Corner tab in the menu. If you would like to receive the course assignments as well, you can sign up below to have the lessons and assignments delivered by email over a ten week period.
What a fabulous idea!!! Though I do not have ages that would benefit from this I can still appreciate the effort you’ve put into making economical,godly education available.
Thank you for your encouragement! The course has been a fun project for me, and something I wish I’d had when I was a younger poet. My hope is that this program may be a blessing to other young poets such as I was. We really need more great Christian poetry!