6.2 Selecting poems
The Board of Studies English K-6 Syllabus Modules handbook (1998) advises a focus on enjoyment and personal response for all stages at the primary level (pp. 94, 172, 268, 366) but leaves the choice of which poems and how many to the teacher.
In making decisions about what to include in the classroom, the poets Judith Wright (1975) and Sean Monahan (1982) emphasise the importance of allowing children to enjoy poetry. Stibbs (as cited in Tunica, 1995) says that he includes
the funny, the crude and the short - the poems most representative of the vulgar traditions. An eventual taste for the subtle and serious in poetry is more likely to be developed by enjoyment, experience and knowledge of a mixture of poems in school ... than by an unrelieved diet of classics (p.23).
Nevertheless this 'mixture' can include the classics by poets such as Lamb, Rossetti, Stevenson, Lear and Carroll suggests Tunica (1995). Robinson (1985) agrees, talking of her enjoyment at an early age of the works of Coleridge, Shelley and Frost (all of which appear in the anthology I like this poem), while Causley (1985) cites Auden's comment that there are only "some good poems which are only for adults" (p.8).
In aiming to strike the balance between works which have immediate appeal and those that are more challenging, Travers (1986) argues that teachers need to keep the focus on the student, using their knowledge of the class' interests, ability and literary experience.