Using Questions to Solve the Puzzle of Poetry

A Teacher’s Resource

“Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder,

with a dash of dictionary.”
Kahlil Gibran
The idea of Poetry 180—a poem a day for high school students—appealed to me from the start; however, as a
teacher of struggling readers, I saw the original concept as a wasted opportunity. Yes, I wanted my students to come
to appreciate poetry (or at least not fear it), but I also saw the potential for improving vocabulary, increasing
background knowledge, and practicing reading skills through meaningful conversation about text.

So, I followed Billy Collins’s plan and shared a poem a day with my students. I did more than just share, though. We
talked. We questioned. We explored. We learned. We understood. I watched my students open up to poetry,
which in turn, gave them added confidence to tackle other challenging texts.

We didn’t limit our discussions to Poetry 180 poems, either. We used the same approach to tackle the classics in
out lit book and any other poem I found that connected to other texts we were reading.

Sharing the impact of a poem a day with my colleagues, I found very competent English teachers who felt
uncomfortable teaching poetry. Like many students, they were intimidated by hidden meanings and challenging
syntax. I tried to explain that it’s OK not to know—and that kids like to see their teachers figure it out, too. Still, the
teachers didn’t know where to start. To help them, I started compiling this list of questions and have been adding to
it ever since!

The list you have contains questions from my own experiences in the classroom, culled from trainings, conferences,
professional books, conversations with colleagues, and anywhere else I have encountered poetry and teaching in
the last 17 years. I hope you will find it helpful as you share the joy, the pain, the wonder, and the dictionary with
your students!

--Julie Conlon
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Julie-Conlon

About the Author

Julie honed her craft teaching English and reading in middle, high school, and
junior college classrooms for 15 years before stepping into her current role as
the Literacy Coach at Melbourne High School in Florida. She attended Auburn
University (War Eagle!) and earned a B.A. in English and an M.Ed. In Secondary
English Education. She is a member of the Florida Reading Association and the International
Literacy Association and attends conferences and reads voraciously to stay current with
trends and teaching techniques. Her colleagues selected her as Teacher of the Year in 2014,
and she represented her county as the Literacy Coach of the Year in 2017. Her goal is to make
classrooms better—for students and teachers—by sharing ideas based on her own work with
students and teachers throughout her career. She blogs at www.julieconlon.com and she has
been a member of the TpT community since 2006.

© 2013 Julie Conlon

 How to Use These Questions
• Please DO NOT pass out and assign these questions as they are—let your students find something
to love in poetry, not another poetry assignment to hate!

• Use these question to INSPIRE thought and discussion. Students can write down their thoughts
prior to sharing, but most of the time, student and teacher responses should be shared and
discussed!

• MIX IT UP! There are enough questions here to allow you to find the ones that fit each poem best.

• Keep the FOCUS ON THE TEXT. Students should justify their interpretations (and their
questions) by pointing to specific stanzas, lines, and words in the poems.

• Don’t be afraid to say “I DON’T KNOW.” Use your own uncertainty as a chance to model how to
discover meaning through close reading.

Follow me on Pinterest. I’m building a significant collection of links and resources for all the
texts I teach as well as general classroom instructional strategies.
http://www.pinterest.com/julieconlonTpT

Got Poetry?
These two websites are excellent sources of poetry for
Check out my other Poetry-180-inspired lesson—
the classroom:
also available on TeachersPayTeachers:
Poetry 180
Founded by former Poet Laureate, Billy Collins, this
website was designed specifically to provide teachers
with poems to share with their students.

Poets.Org
The American Academy of Poets produces this website
which gets better every year. Their poem-a-day program
features new, unpublished poems each weekday. The
American Academy of Poets are also behind National
Poetry Month—this is where your English teacher
friends got those free poetry posters! They offer all kinds
of other free teacher materials, too.

I blog, too!
Check out www.julieconlon.com
for more ideas you can use in
your classroom!

© 2013 Julie Conlon

 Using The Puzzle of
Questions
to solve POETRY
First Impressions & Conversations Starters
• What is your first reaction or response to the poem?
• What are the first things you notice about the poem?
• What are you wondering about?
• What feelings or emotions did you have as you read this poem?
• What memory does the poem call to mind—of people, places, events, sights, smells, or even
feelings or attitudes?
• Underline your favorite lines, the ones that struck you.
• Mark the lines you’d like to talk about.

Literal Language
• Which words do you need to look up?
• Does the poem use unusual words or use words in an unusual way?
• Why do you think the poet capitalizes the words he/she does?
• What is the most important word in the poem?
• Is the poem punctuated? If so, how? If not, why not?
• How are the sentences of the poem constructed?
• Are questions being asked?

Figurative Language
• What heavily connotative words are used?
• What do you “see” when you read this poem?
• What images does the poet use?
• How do the images relate to one another?
• Does the poem use imagery to achieve a particular effect?
• How much metaphor is in the poem?
• What kind of figurative language does the poem use?
• How is the mood of this poem conveyed through language?

To Narration
take it • What do you see happening in the poem?
up a notch, Paraphrase it—retell the event briefly.
follow almost • Is there conflict in this poem?
every question • Does the poem follow chronological order?
with “Why?” or “How?” • Are there flashbacks or foreshadowing?
Student explanations should • What is the setting or occasion?
refer directly to the text. • What information does the poem impart?

© 2013 Julie Conlon

 Form & Structure
• Is sound an important element of the poem?
• Are there dominant vowel or consonant sounds in the poem?
• What words are repeated in the poem?
• Is there a rhythm to the poem?
• Do you notice any patterns within the poem?
• How do the rhyme scheme and the line arrangement influence the overall effect of the poem?
• What is the purpose of the divisions (stanzas, line breaks) within the poem?
• Does the poem follow a formal poetic structure? Does it ever deviate from that form?
• Was the shape an accident or the poet’s style?
• How does the white space (between stanzas or word)
contribute to the meaning of the poem?
• How is form related to content?

Speaker and Tone

• Who is the speaker?
• How is the speaker feeling in this poem?
• What does the speaker care about? “Good poetry teachers….use
• Who is the audience or person addressed? poetry to challenge their
• How close is the speaker to the reader? students to think, to read with
• What is the tone of this poem? patience and insight, to see
• Which words reveal the tone? connections and relationships,
• Does the tone change as the poem progresses? How? to write with imagination,
precision, and depth.”
--Albert B. Somers
External References
• Does this poem call to mind any other literary work (poem, play, film, story, novel)? If it
does, what is the connection you see between the two?
• Does the poem spring from an identifiable historical moment?
• What circumstances gave rise to the poem?
• Why might a poet dedicate a poem to someone?
• Does the poem speak from a specific culture?
• Are there any symbols? What do they mean?
• Are the symbols universal or do they arise from the context of this poem?

The Big Picture

• What does the title suggest?
• What idea or thought was suggested by the poem Explain it briefly.
• What is this poem really about?
• What sort of person do imagine the author of this poem to be?
• Did you feel involved with the poem or distant from it?
• Why is this poem so well known, so respected, so well liked?
• How do you think this poem is meant to be read?
• If you were asked to write about your reading of this text, upon what would you focus?
Would you write about some association or memory, some aspect of the text itself, about the
author, or something else?

© 2013 Julie Conlon