Dig deeper into the craft of poetry reading and writing with this focused six-week course introducing poetic meters, otherwise known as patterns of rhythm in poetry. Learn to hear and recognize various meters through practice in writing metrical lines. Acquire more language for talking and writing about the poems you read. Become a more sophisticated reader of poetry, as you explore further how a poem’s sound may enhance its meaning and your experience of it.

How to get the most out of  Introduction to Metrical Forms: Poetry With Sally Thomas:

• First, read the course materials below before the first class meeting.

• Then have a notebook ready and available for class notes each live session.

• Read assignments before class meetings

• Watch that week’s recording if you need to revisit information from our live session.

• Do the assignments, quizzes, and any extra work assigned for that week.

• Once the course is completed to the parent's and professor’s satisfaction, there is a Certificate of Completion at the end to be filled in for your records.
  
  

Special Notes: This course follows and references the introductory How to Read a Poem course.

Like How to Read a Poem, this course is designed to be self-guided, with some evaluation from the parent instructor. It's not necessary for the parent to know anything about poetry! Like How to Read a Poem, this course comes with helpful handouts, homework instructions, and rubrics for evaluating a student's work, which should enable any parent to assign a grade with confidence. Of course, the ideal would be for parents to learn alongside students, but we all know that in a busy family that's not always feasible. Still, touching base with high-school students about their work in a weekly meeting is a good practice. This would provide the student an opportunity on a regular basis to present and talk about the week's work.

Parents will want to use their discretion here, but it is PREFERABLE that students hand-write all work, if possible, and present their week's work, plus the final course project, orally to a parent. These practices will help mitigate against the inevitable temptation to use AI in homework and writing exercises. It might be of interest to know that many college professors in the humanities are pivoting to oral exams and handwritten in-class essays for precisely the same reason. 

All course materials are provided FREE by the instructor. This course includes a writing component.

Total classes: 6
Duration per class: 55 minutes

Prerequisite: How to Read a Poem
Suggested grade level: 9th to 12th grade
Suggested credit: ½ semester Poetry or Literature. For a full semester credit, a student might begin with How to Read a Poem, then progress to this course. The third course in this poetry sequence, forthcoming soon, is Introduction to Stanza Forms, for another half credit in literature.

Instructor: Sally Thomas

Course description: This six-week course will cover basic poetic meters, with standard literary terminology. Students will learn to recognize different poetic meters and will practice writing in them, to emerge as more sophisticated readers of, and writers about, poetry. This introductory-level course may provide a springboard to any other literature course, or augment a class taken concurrently.

Course outline:

Week 1: Accentual Meters: Anglo-Saxon Poetry and Beyond
Week 2: Introduction to Metrical Feet: Iambic Pentameter
Week 3: More Metrical Feet: The Trochee (also Tetrameter)
Week 4: Still More Metrical Feet: Anapests and Dactyls
Week 5: How Many Feet, If Not Five? Dimeter, Trimeter.
Week 6: How Many Feet, If Not Two, Three, Four, or Five? Hexameter, Heptameter, Octameter

Course materials: Handouts provided FREE by the instructor.

Homework: Homework will consist of five poems per week, to be read ideally one per weekday, carefully, with attention, multiple times, with notes to be submitted. There will also be a weekly reading quiz, and an optional poetry-writing exercise. Students should budget an hour, five days a week, on homework, inclusive of writing exercises and quizzes.

Technical Help: If you have any technical trouble or questions about course content, please email us at homeschoolconnections@gmail.com.

©2023 Homeschool Connections and Sally Thomas. All rights reserved. This course is designed by Sally Thomas.

• This material is only to be used for its intended purpose by active subscribers of Homeschool Connections. Any other use without explicit permission is in violation of the seventh commandment (yes, that 7th commandment) and in violation of US and International copyright laws.

• You may print or download to local hard disk extracts for your personal homeschool and non-commercial use only. This is not to be used for homeschool co-ops without express written permission from Homeschool Connections.