ABSTRACT
Joy Alexander describes misunderstandings of poems happening as a result of a ‘rush to meaning’, where pupils bypass ‘the pure act of reading’ rather than ‘allowing the poet to speak and the reader to hear and … trusting that the poet had provided all that was required for understanding’. Just as there are differing views about poetry reading, so there are various schools of thought about teaching poetry writing. It is therefore an area of work where talking to colleagues and observing them at work in the classroom will prove extremely valuable. Work on poetry is often one of the first things that student teachers are asked to undertake in the classroom. One possible framework for thinking about pupils’ development as readers, writers and critics of poetry across the secondary age range will be explored. It is based on a theory of reading outlined by Robert Scholes in Textual Power.
