ABSTRACT
Poetry, then, provides an opportunity to move pupils from a use of language which is everyday and familiar, towards an engagement with compressed ideas, connotation (the ways in which words and phrases resonate with associated meanings) and ambiguity. Engagement with verse at text level demands that children draw upon their wider knowledge and experience as they learn to tease out contextual clues and to ask appropriate questions. Such engagement will involve children in the four language modes of reading, writing, speaking and listening and will also depend upon what might be termed a ‘social literacy’ (the ability to ‘read’ the needs and views of others in the classroom) which makes a community of enquiry possible. There is no reason at all why such literacy activities should become divorced from that world of enjoyment, expression and feeling which those who use poetry in their teaching will already be familiar.
