Need help enrolling?
Watch our video tutorial.
- Thumbnail
-
- Course name
-
Introduction to Metrical Forms: Poetry with Sally Thomas
- Summary
-
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.
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 name
-
Introduction to Metrical Forms: Poetry with Sally Thomas
- Instructor
-
Sally Thomas
- Semester
-
Recorded
- Category
-
Literature ➤ Poetry Literature
- Grade levels
-
High School
- Start time
-
October 24th, 2023 at 12:00 AM ET
- Course type
-
Recorded, free with subscription
- Relative due dates
- Enhanced quiz security
- Enhanced assignment security
- This material is only to be used for its intended purpose by active subscribers of Homeschool Connections or purchasers of the course. Any other use without explicit permission is in violation of the seventh commandment, and in violation of US and International copyright laws.
- You may print or download to your own storage extracts for your personal homeschool and non-commercial use only. Use for homeschool co-ops is permitted after contacting customer support and receiving written permission from Homeschool Connections.
- Upon completion of the course, you must delete all copies of course materials from any storage on which you saved permissible extracts.
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
Duration
Prerequisites
How to Read a Poem
Suggested grade level
Suggested credit
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
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.
Sally Thomas
sallytslc@hotmail.com
About Sally Thomas
Sally Thomas is a poet, essayist, and fiction writer who holds a BS in English and secondary education from Vanderbilt University. She has completed extensive graduate work in literature and creative writing, and her teaching background includes experience in both the high school and the college classroom, where she has taught literature, composition, and creative writing.
© 2024 Homeschool Connections; Sally Thomas. All Rights Reserved.
Violation of the above copyright policies may result in expulsion without any refund and/or legal action.