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I've been a teacher of secretarial subjects for many years and English language was the most important subject of all.   One of the most important things my students had to learn is that punctuation and capitalization in their transcripts was 100% important because the firm /organization that would be employing them,  would first and foremost be judged by probably the first letter that another person received from them.  Can you imagine what you would feel if you received a letter from a firm which had no punctuation or capitalization in it and probably sent out with spelling mistakes etc?  

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So, with my experience of training young people for the world of work, and with my own experience of working in about every type of office that you can imagine, could I then turn my hand to the writing of poetry and do exactly that for which my own students would have lost many marks when they handed me work such as this to mark - or, worse still, handed in to an examiner of English to mark?

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Omitting punctuation, omitting capitalization from the first letter of a name etc  in the writing of our wonderful  English language goes against anything that I have stood for as a teacher of English, and it does nothing to make the reading and enjoyment of work any better.  To offer children work such as this, when they're struggling to learn how to write English correctly, to me is not right at all and other teachers of English agree.  So I'm not sorry to tell you that I do not go along with this.  

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Teachers of English who have studied psychology before teaching will remember 'habit formation' as a large part of their training.  I was trained, as a teacher of skilled subjects, that if pupils/students see something done in a particular way 3 times (and that, to the psychologists, was the magic number), the chances were very high that they would remember what they'd seen, for life. 

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Can I Recommend:  I suggest that your students listen to me reading a poem first and foremost.  Then, I recommend that perhaps they would like to listen to it again (if they have a computer) for my poems are easy to find.  (Google the name of the poem and my name, or JOSIE'S POEMS after that).  Mr Google will quickly direct them to the right page.  The next day I suggest that they listen again to the poem and then see the words as they listen.  The rhyming poems are the very best because children can easily see that words which sound alike are not necessarily spelt alike.  It is a good idea for them to keep a little notebook and note the rhyming words next to each other.

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The fact that I've written the majority of my poems with metre, helps them to break the words in the poems down into sounds and this is so important when learning a language.

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EXPRESSION:  I have tried hard to put good expression into my voice when recording the words, and being a native English speaker, this will help them to speak English clearly.  So the next important job for them is to read the words of the poem whilst, at the same time, following the sound of my voice - and do this at least three times.

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Lastly, do lead them up to the point where they learn verses by heart and are prepared to perform the poem, or a verse, in front of the class, throwing their voices clearly across the classroom, as a teacher has to learn how to do. Spoken English will probably be so very important to them in their lifetime.

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You could always, at a later date, give them a spelling test, using the words that rhyme but are spelt differently, for the test.

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This morning I read: 'Because there are no set rules and you don't have to follow a strict rhyme scheme or structure, there's lots more freedom for poets to experiment. Poets also have more freedom with word choice. With rhyming poems, you're restricted to using words that fit the rhyme scheme and metre.'

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As a teacher of our English language for most of my working life, and also a poet right through my retirement (and I'm now 82), I completely disagree with the above statement, and you'll see from my own poetry that there is no restriction regarding the words that I need to use to make my poems first-class for young people who are learning our language.  We have so many words that have similar meanings to choose from.  To give them poems without punctuation and you will be teaching them that punctuation and perhaps spelling are not essential requirements of our wonderful English language.  This, for parents or for teachers of English, cannot be the right thing.  I'm sure you'll agree - and examiners, for certain, won't agree with this.

 

As for me, I'll never be a laureate now after saying the above - - - but I'll always be a teacher in my heart and want to do good for the young people of this world.      Josie

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