That's really neat, Scott. And I think it's important to teach this while students are also beginning to learn foreign languages (though many schools  have taken that out of 7th grade curriculum) I also wonder about the notion of 'critical age', brain development, and learning grammatical categories. Most of my students who readily understand grammar had begun to learn the categories in middle school and they often really liked it.  Most students who never learned it and never understood it do have a harder time.
 
I am not aware of a formal poetry curriculum, but I have used poetry in my English grammar classes. 
Browning's "Meeting at Night" is essentially a succession of noun phrases, for example, so it is great for creating NP trees.  "My Last Duchess" is great for teaching about deixis.
 
Linda
_________________________________
 
Linda Di Desidero, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Assistant Academic Director of Writing
University of Maryland University College
3501 University Boulevard, East
Adelphi, MD 20783

________________________________

From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Scott Woods
Sent: Sat 10/13/2007 12:48 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: teaching poetry via grammatical analysis


Listmates,
Has much been done to develop a curriculum for teaching poetry using grammatical analysis?  Does anyone on the list approach poems by looking at their grammatical structures?  I have done this with my 7th graders, now that they have learned some grammar, and have found that once they see what is going on grammatically, they can usually see what the poem means more clearly.  For instance, in Housman's poem 
 
	From the wash the laundress sends 	
	My collars home with ravelled ends: 	
	I must fit, now these are frayed, 	
 
 
My neck with new ones London-made. 	
5
Homespun collars, homespun hearts, 	
	Wear to rags in foreign parts. 	
	Mine at least's as good as done, 	
	And I must get a London one. 	
 
Most of my students thought the poet was talking about collars, and they couldn't see the point of the poem.  Once they saw that the first stanza and second stanzas differed in number ( ones, one, are, 's), they were able to see that the poet had shifted from talking about collars to talking about his own heart and how it had changed.  I didn't stop at grammar, but starting with grammar helped them see the poem.  
 
I know this might sound strange, but maybe a series of graded exercises, using authentic poems by great poets, might give students an opportunity to apply their developing grammatical knowledge by giving them access to otherwise incomprehensible poems.
 
Scott Woods

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