Poetry? Yest please, but.... lend a helping hand!

Offer your students the chance of approaching Poetry critically, by simply starting from any poems you - or they! - wish to....
Make them aware they are taking the first step towards understanding Poetry as a literary genre.
Just ask students to try and point out the main features they are able to recognise when dealing with a poem: is it a demanding task? If so, ask them if they think dealing with poetry might mean they can rely on their:
- eyes and see...
- ears and listen to the sounds...
- voices and utter words and sentences in a peculiar language....
It won't be a piece of cake for them to describe, or simply talk about what they are supposed to understand and analyse, that is poetry! However, see what happens if they are supported with some materials that provide them with some 'visual' guidelines: ask students to look for the exact meaning of the words - used in text analysis - they have in the worksheets, see how they learn and finally use the exact terminology to describe and talk about what they, finally, realise is 'Poetry'...