[Shereen] http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/161

I find this website a good start for teacher's who may be at a loss for how to start teaching/how to make their Literature lessons more interesting.

1. Tips for Teaching Poetry
(http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/85)

I enjoyed reading this section because it provided various tips for making literature interesting and innovative. For example, it starts at the most basic steps such as talking to your school librarian to try and bring in more books that will engage students instead of bore them and turn them away from reading. I also found the success stories over the years very helpful because it actually shares with readers how different teachers and readers from all over America have implemented various methods of teaching Literature and how students have enjoyed and benefited from it.

2. Poetry Read-a-thon

I was drawn to this idea when I first read about it, and hope to be able to implement it in my classroom someday. Students will over a period of time work on an unlimited number of poems writing a 75-100 word response to each poem. The teacher will collect all the poems for say the entire month into a master log and it will be sent to the Academy of American Poets. I think that this idea can be adapted in a classroom as an introduction to poetry to expose students to various elements of poetry such as imagery etc. This way the students will actually have an entire class log of all the poems that they have worked on.

3. Poetry Packages
There are also poetry packages on various topics like 'war' and 'women' that are available to educators to tap on in order to teach students.