This week, we had a 1/2 day for parent/teacher conferences. Since I only had 1/2 of my students, and I didn't want to start anything new, my students did a poetry project. I handed out 4 poems from varying modern writers. I chose those because my students always like a poem more if the poet is still alive. We read the poems aloud together in class. Then, I had the students re-read the poem and choose three out of the four to work with. Together in partners, they had to answer the following questions:
1. Find one thing that you really like. I told them it could be a word, image, etc.
2. Find one thing that is really weird or strange. Again, I told them it could be a word, image, etc.
3. Find one thing that you would like to copy.
My students, who usually never work on 1/2 days, started really talking about the poems. I heard them saying things like "those words are really cool together" or "I wonder what they're saying here" or even "what is this about?". Although they are not using the types of specific, academic language we use in class, they still have the essential quandaries for reading and enjoying poetry. It was an interesting assignment that just popped up, literally-I came up with it that morning before class.
I'm glad to see that colleagues are having success at with poetry activities in the classroom. It's interesting how sometimes the ideas you develop on-the-fly become the most engaging for students. The art of poetry lends itself to creativity and it only makes sense that when you are creative in developing an activity, the students can sense it. A lack of thinking through every aspect of an activity causes the teacher to know less about what to expect, and often what happens is a pleasant surprise. I believe that the open-ended nature of your questions made the activity more fun. I think students naturally like poetry; it's when we bog it down with too many terms and technicalities, that we end up with disenchanted students.
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