Entry: In preparation for this unit, students will be asked to select a favorite poem and take this poem to the next class. In addition, students should write down and develop a study question for their poem to share with the class.
Presentation:
Day One:
- . Journal Entry: In their daily journals, students should free write to answer the question, "What is poetry"?
- After the students have finished journaling, we will read a very popular poem, "The Road not Taken" by Robert Frost. A discussion of the the poem will follow with two main purposes.
First, as a class we will attempt to paraphrase the poem from beginning to end to determine what is happening in the poem. Then, we will generally address the poem's meaning. Hopefully, from their responses, students will be begin to understand that a poem's meaning can be different for different readers. Finally, we will attempt to answer this question: Is Frost's poem a "good poem" and why? Hopefully, the discussion here will allow us to consider such aspects of poetry as speaker, meaning, rhyme (or lack thereof), etc. that students should be familiar with at this time. Ultimately, students should begin to understand that each reader has his/her own definition of what constitutes "good" poetry.
- Next, students will be divided into groups of five where they will read and share their favorite poems to the group, using the discussion question that they have prepared beforehand. After each student has presented within the group, the students will respond to this question and present the results to the entire class: What subjects do poets write about? As students present their groups subjects to the class, we will hopefully begin to see that poets write about numerous subjects - the subject matter is truly limitless.
- As the class concludes, we will discuss how anyone can write a poem because, after all, poetry simply involves words, or any other form of expression that a poet wishes to use to communicate their ideas . We will talk about how the thought of writing a poem can be intimidating because we often don't have an idea as to where and/or how to begin writing. We will talk about how formulas can often be a starting point for writing poetry. Then, we will discuss how we are going to write a formula poem tonight for homework which is biographical - the bio-poem. Then, we will distribute and review the bio-poem assignment with the students.
Instructions for Bio-Poem:
- Write your first name.
- Write two words that describe you, such as friendly, happy, curious, etc.
- Write a line about your future. Begin with an -ing word, such as dreaming, hoping, planning, etc.
- Write a simile (using like or as) about yourself, such as happy as..., busy as..., shy as..., etc.
- Write your last name
- Center the lines of your poem so that it takes the concrete shape of diamond, giving you a concrete poem as well as bio-poem.
Example:
Jen
Honest. Naive.
Hoping to be an educator
Crazy as a lark
MacDonald
Top
Day Two:
- . Sharing and Publishing of Diamond Poems: Students will be given the opportunity to share their autobiographical diamond poems that they wrote for homework. After students have shared their poems, we will publish (or display) them on the "poetry" bulletin board at the front of the classroom.
- Journal Entry - Students will be asked to reread what they wrote the day before pertaining to “What is Poetry?”, and expand upon their ideas, using what they have learned about poetry up to this point.
- After students have completed their free writing, we will brainstorm a list of definitions on the board. Then, as a class, we will write our own definition of poetry and display it on the poetry bulletin board.
- We will reiterate that poetry can often be simple and can stem simply from a listing of words or the observation of an image. Then, we will share two imagist poems (distributed to students as handouts). The first will be a poem by William Burford, titled “A Christmas Tree”. The second poem will be by Stuart Godfrey, titled “Return of the Canada Geese”. After reading the poems, we will ask students to discuss their impressions of the poems. What is unusual about the poems? What, if anything, do you notice about rhyme, punctuation, capitalization, etc.? How would you describe the poet's style? What is his tone? Do you think the poems have meaning - only one meaning or more than one meaning, etc.? Does the meaning depend upon the reader or the author, etc.? Does a poem have to have meaning - or a moral lesson to be a good poem?
- . After the discussion, we will introduce to students the idea of writing by sharing an example of found poetry with them from page 31 of Joseph Tsujimoto's text Teaching Poetry Writing to Adolescents. Then, the students will write their own found poems. We will have numerous newspapers and magazines in the classroom for students to be able to clip ideas for their found poems. The directions we provide to the students are taken directly pages 30 and 31 of Tsujimoto's text.
Found Poem Directions:
- Copy one or two unique, rich, musical, or odd sentences found in a newspaper, magazine, history book, encyclopedia, letter, and so forth.
- Break the sentences into poetic lines, arranging words and phrases in the most meaningful and surprising ways.
- (a)Title your work Found Poem.
(b). Beneath your title write (in parentheses) "words from" title of article (in quotes), title of publication (underlined), date, page number.
(c). At the end of your poem, and to the right, write "-arranged by your name." (Tsujimoto 30-31)
Top
Day Three:
- Students will share their found poems in groups of five. Each group will select one poem to share with the class and to publish on the poetry bulletin board.
- Journal Entry: Students will then reflect on their writing of the found poem and the sharing of other students' poems. What did you like and/or dislike about the found poems?. What ideas or thoughts about poetry did you gain from participating in the writing and sharing of found poems? We will have a brief discussion following the journal entry to again reiterate the complexity, yet simplicity, of poetry and all the aspects of literature that poetry involves, such as imagery, style, speaker, content, tone, etc.
- Next, we will discuss that poems can often be categorized by their content and/or their structure. Then, we will explain that today we will be focusing on narrative poetry, poetry that tells a story. At this point, we will review the elements of a short story (plot, characters, setting, point of view, etc.) that we studied in our short story unit. We will explain that many of the same elements are evident in narrative poetry, particularly characters and plot. We will put notes defining narrative poem and its characteristics on the overhead for students to take down as we discuss.
- We'll look back at the Robert Frost poem "The Road not Taken” from day one. We will ask students to explain to us whether they believe "The Road not Taken" to be a narrative poem or not. Why? Then, we will use their Poetic Insight textbook, to look at Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s narrative poem “Evangeline” (p. 78). Students will first read the poem individually. Then the students will follow along as we read the poem aloud. Students will then break into groups, where they will be given a sheet of flip chart paper. Students should review the poem and explain in detail (on the newsprint) why "Evangeline" is considered a narrative poem. Concrete examples must be used to back up the explanations. After a 10 to 15 minute period, students will present their results to the class.
- After students have presented their group work, we will discuss the poem as a class, reiterating the elements of narrative poetry and delving into the possible thematic interpretations of this poem. We will also highlight and define for the students the term "hyperbole," or exaggeration, noting that "Cooney died at second" is a classic example. In closing the lesson, we will note that there are several specific types of narrative poetry. One type of narrative poetry is the epic, which we have already studied in our reading of Homer's Odyssey. Another common type of narrative is the ballad, a narrative poem type that we will be studying tomorrow. For homework, students will need to read Gordon Lightfoot’s ballad "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" (p. 86), and paraphrase the plot of the ballad in five to ten sentences
Top
Day Four:
- As the class begins, we will call on several students to help define "narrative poetry" for the class as a review of yesterday's lesson.
- Then, we will play a recording of the ballad "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" for the students, noting that ballads are narrative poems that are meant to be sung. We will then call upon students to allow them to express what is interesting or different to them about this poem when compared to some of the others we have studied. Hopefully, students will note that one line is repeated (or some variation of it) in each stanza. Students will probably note that each stanza has the same number of lines, that dialogue is used, and that the dialogue is often slang. After brainstorming a list of these items, we will provide notes for the students to take on the typical characteristics of a ballad, such as: three-or-four line stanzas, use of dialogue and dialect, a simple plot often about love or dying, characters in conflict, a refrain repeated in each stanza, etc.
- Next, students will be placed into groups. Each group will select one of the short stories we read in our short story unit and actually transform that story into a ballad. Students will need to develop a tune for the ballad in addition to some refrain. (In other words, students may use a familiar theme show tune, such as the theme song from Friends as their music.) The ballad must recount an entire plot from beginning to end and must be written in the three or four-line ballad stanzas. Each group will present its ballad to the class tomorrow. Students may select to actually cast their characters in costumes when they present their ballads tomorrow. Homework: Complete any preparations for presenting your ballads tomorrow.
Top
Day Five:
- Quick oral review of poetry, narrative poetry, epic, ballad, refrain, repetition, stanza, dialect, dialogue, alliteration, onomatopoeia, etc. (These terms are a key part of the Literary Heritage 2201 course, and the final exam).
- Provide students with approximately ten minutes of class time to get together with their groups and put the finishing touches on their ballad presentations.
- Have each group present its ballad - probably five groups in all-in front of a video camera, which will go in our class video library.
- Ask students what the challenges of the assignment turned out to be - what were the difficulties in taking a story and adjusting the basic plot of the story to the ballad format? Hopefully, in responding to this discussion question, students will indirectly review the essential traits of the ballad (i.e. "making the refrain fit in each time," "putting only four lines in a stanza and making one stanza logically follow the next," etc.)
- For the last ten minutes of class students will be asked to write a reflection in their journals, talking about their experiences writing a ballad, the problems they encountered in their groups and the ways that they handled these problems.
- Students will be asked to look through their textbooks and pick out a poem that interests them. These poems are to be taken to class the following day.
Top
Day Six:
- Brief Poetry Quiz (#1) on material covered to date.
- Students are to be placed into focus groups, where they will share the poetry they had chosen the night before, and ideas about each others selections. They will be given 15 minutes for their discussions.
- Students will return to their seats to work individually. Students will be asked to illustrate these poems through drawing, photography, collage, etc. We will have a variety of art supplies and magazines available in the classroom. These illustrations will be due tomorrow.
Top
Day Seven:
- .At the beginning of class, each student will present his/her illustration to the whole class. They will be videotaped, and this will be added to their class video. This will take up most of the class. These illustrations will be put up on the walls, by us after class.
- Journal Entry: For the last ten minutes of class have students write about their poems, how these poems had an impact, and why they chose the representation that they did.
Top
Day Eight:
- We will explain to the students that today is the "technical day" of the poetry project - a day in which we will define a lot of technical terms. We will explain that the terms are of two types - those dealing with figurative language (simile, metaphor, personification, hyperbole, symbol, etc.) and those dealing with sound, or musical devices (assonance, alliteration, consonance, onomatopoeia, repetition, parallelism, etc.). We will write a short definition for each term on the overhead for students to copy. Then, we will elicit a short example from a student in the class - or we will provide a short example.
- Next, we will look at several poems in class together and identify examples of each of these devices. The poems we will look at will include:
- "The Eagle" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
- "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" by William Wordsworth
- "Dream Deferred" and "Dreams" by Langston Hughes
- "The Sky Is Low" by Emily Dickinson
- "Splinter" by Carl Sandburg
- "The Bells" by Edgar Allan Poe
- Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
- Then, students will be paired up with two other people for a group of three. Poetry books, anthologies, handouts, etc. will be spread around the room. Each person is responsible for finding a good example that the reader likes of each of the figurative language and musical devices. The examples should be written down on each person's own paper. Students may rely on their other two partners for help in completing the exercise.
- Next, students should write their own original examples, or lines of poetry, for each of the figurative language and musical devices.
Top
Day Nine:
- Today, we will discuss the sonnet as a form of the lyric poem. We will review the idea of a rhyme scheme, and students will receive two handouts. One handout will have William Shakespeare's "Sonnet 30" on it. The other handout will have a copy of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "The Sound of the Sea" on it. As a class, we will mark the rhyme scheme of both poems. Then, we will discuss the difference in the rhyme schemes in the two poems and hopefully note that both poems establish a regular -or patterned - rhyme scheme. At this point, we will introduce the notes for the Shakespearean, or English, Sonnet and the Italian, or Petrarchan, sonnet. Then, we will give students a copy of two additional sonnets without the authors' names present and ask them to identify what kind of sonnet is being modeled.
- Journal Entry: We will ask students to reflect on the four sonnets that they have read today. We will ask them to note similarities and differences among the four sonnets. Are there any major similarities between the four poems that would lead you to make generalizations about the content of sonnets? (Hopefully, students will be able to arrive at the idea that sonnets often delve into the subject of love - lost love, futile love, unreciprocated love, etc.) Discussion will follow the journal time.
- . We will advise the students that there will be a poetry test, that we will give on the 11th day, and in preparation for this test we will play “Who Wants to be a Poetry Millionaire?”, a game that we have developed that uses the terms and ideas that we have discussed in class.
Top
Day Ten:
- Today, we will be in the computer lab the entire time. We will have the students chat with their Internet Buddies (this has been set up at the beginning of the year), they will talk about what they have learned up to this point, and see how their poetry course compares with that of their buddy. They will share their thoughts on poetry and perhaps even an original poem.
- . We will then have students do research on a poet that we have encountered. This information will be used on their personal web pages which we will be starting in the upcoming days. These Web pages will be linked to our main class page.
Top
Evaluation
We have decided to have our students create poetry portfolios, which will be used to house all of the work they have done throughout the unit
- a response to the question “What is poetry”, and “What do poets write about?”
- their individual “bio” poems
- their individual “found”poems
- their poetry illustrations
- their selections of lines of poetry that display the various elements that we have discussed.
From this list students will be asked to select three pieces that they feel is an indication of their best work. We will be evaluating this for creativity, and will be using scoring rubrics.
We will also be evaluating their journals entries, not so much for content, but just to ensure that they have actually completed what has been asked of them.
And finally we will be giving them two quizzes, that will be used to evaluate their progress.
With regard to their web pages, which will be evaluated at a later date, we have a scoring rubric that we will discuss with the class before using, and that will take into account the elements that we require in the web pages.
Top
