Staff report
BOSTIAN HEIGHTS ó Donna Rymer, who teaches academically-gifted classes at Bostian Heights Elementary, said students these days don’t know much about poetry.
“They’re reluctant to read it or write it,” she said.
That changed Monday night at Bostian Heights. Rymer led her fourth- and fifth-grade charges in Poetry Night.
The students heard from a published poet, recited poetry they’d written, got their parents involved in an inner-active trivia game involving poetry and presented their parents poetry booklets as early Christmas presents.
Better still, they had a good time while doing it all.
“Tonight,” Rymer said, “we made it fun.”
Rymer said every year she teaches a different topic and this year focused on poetry. The 16 students who make up her two classes seized the opportunity.
“The purpose was to make poetry come alive,” Rymer said.
Students have been writing poetry for several weeks and chose a particular topic that interested them about which they wrote a number of poems.
For example, one student wrote about chess while another wrote about medieval lore. It was these subjects around which students centered their poetry booklets.
For Poetry Night, Dr. Janice Fuller, a published poet and professor of English at Catawba College, talked to students about what poetry is and what it means to her. She presented examples of her poetry.
Students also heard as Megan Riddle, the music teacher at Bostian, sang a poem to them. Students later involved themselves in a reader’s theater.
“I think they look at poetry differently now than they did a few months ago,” Rymer said.