A Possibility for Poetry

1. A Possibility for Poetry A chillaxed approach to integrating poetry into your daily routine

2. Let’s get honest about poetry. • How do you feel about poetry PERSONALLY? • How do you feel about poetry IN THE CLASSROOM?

3. My Issue • I always taught the “Poetry Unit.” • Teaching on the “Poetry Unit” made things weird. • I felt bad for just stuffing poems into novel studies or keeping them all huddled together in the “Poetry Unit” together. • They wanted to come out and play all semester not just when a novel had a connection or when it was time for the “Poetry Unit.” • Poetry is awesome and short and speaks to our souls and makes us think.

4. My Cool Resource • I ordered and read Nancie Atwell’s Naming the World. • It comes with a teacher guide and DVD that shows her teaching poems in her perfect independent school. • I used her structure and my own ideas to come up with a way to get poetry into my classroom daily. • Jim Burke also does a weekly poem, I think. And Jim Burke’s cool.

5. My Plan • To teach poems all semester long. • To do small, teeny-tiny activities daily or whenever I get the chance. Small, teeny-tiny activities are focused and specific. They don’t overwhelm students. • To show students ALL kinds of poems over the course of the year so that they can see all the wonderful things poems can do. Easy poems. Hard poems. New poems. Old poems. My favorite poems. Teens’ favorite poems. Classic poems. • To indirectly teach close reading and annotation skills.

6. My Preparation • I choose a poem to study with my students. • I read it. • I annotate it like a crazy English teacher should. • I take a good look and think about some things: • Why would kids connect to this poem? • Is any background knowledge need? • What devices and interesting uses of language do I notice? • What would be some good things to make sure students notice about this poem? • Why is this poem cool and interesting?

7. No Pressure, Dude. • I put NO pressure on myself to do a certain number of poems. • I put NO pressure on myself to do a certain number of activities. • I put NO pressure on myself to make sure I do poems every single day. • I put NO pressure on myself to make sure I cover every single little tiny thing I see in the poem. • I put NO pressure on myself to have an “assessment” for every single poem.

8. What I do care about: • I DO try to make sure the first reading is relaxed. • I DO try to break each mini lesson into small parts. • I DO let lessons happen as kids bring ideas up. • I DO make sure to review or sneak in the literary terms or devices in a chillaxed way. • I DO pick poems that are interesting to me and hopefully to students. • I DO allow for flexibility and change in plan. • I DO spend more or less time on the poetry as I see how the kids react and as I think about what else I have to accomplish that day.

9. The Main Idea • Choose a poem. • Do your preparation. • Break it down and plan out a few focus activities/foldables/stickies/hunts/etc. for the kids to engage in. • First day – just read (well) and kids select lines they like or notice. Kids share, no worries or literary terms (unless it’s just obvious or student states it). • Second day – small activity • Third day – another small activity – either new or building on the previous day • Next day – if you like….as many days as you need. Some poems take me two days and some I spend four to five days on. None of this is tied to days of the week. • Final day (whatever that is) – students RATE the poem and reflect. Assessment here if you like.

10. First Day • Pass out poem. (Glue in interactive notebook or whatever you like.) • Quick look at title any background you like. • Read poem well. • Have kids go back into the poem and underline something (you decide and depends on poem: fav lines, interesting lines, what they can see/hear/etc.). • Have a few kids share. I say, “Let’s hear from four people. What lines did you notice.” They can state a reason or not. Just about sharing today. • Put poem away and move on until next time.

11. Next Day • Reread poem. • Give kids a term or something to look for or do. • EXAMPLE: For “You Can’t Write a Poem about McDonald’s” I review IMAGERY with students and remind them it’s ALL senses not just visual. They go through and underline IMAGERY. We create a quick chart by sense on the board and they copy it in the margin. • Done for the day.

12. Next Day • Reread poem (or not). • Give kids a task. • Go over it. • Move on. • EXAMPLE: Plot – I told kids next that this story has a story sort of arc to it, a beginning, middle, and end. Kids reread poem and make a list of events: what happened. We went over it as a class.

13. Final Day • Reread poem…it’s our last day with this poem! • Give kids activity. • Go over it. • RATE POEM – Whatever scale they want and include explanation. • Assessment if you like. A constructed response type question or set of a few multiple choice questions that mirror EOC or NCFE. • EXAMPLE: Theme. We looked at details and have read poem for a few days. Now what message do you think poet is trying to get to us. Define theme. Kids find lines that they feel REVEAL theme. Share and share their reasons. Write what they think poem is saying and have a little discussion. Rate and done!

14. Variations • Sometimes an intro activity or journal-type question can be good. For example: With “Defining the Magic” by Charles Bukowski, I ask kids to jot down their feelings about poetry AND to them what a good poem should be. Then they can compare their ideas to the poet’s. • A personal journal can be nice at the end of a poem, too. With “Autobiography in Five Short Chapters” by Portia Nelson, I ask students at the end what their “holes in the sidewalk” are. What are their bad habits and what can they do to change. The responses are personal and sometimes quite serious. • Imitations are good final activities. We write imitations of “Where I’m From” using the questionnaire in the Atwell book. • Write specific questions for poems that you want kids to discuss and/or answer/think about.

15. CCSS Variations – NBHS PLC • One thing we are doing at NBHS is using quick note card responses as our common formative assessments. • This year we are writing common question stems. We give the stem to the students and collect the cards. We sort cards and evaluate understanding. • Possible stem for a poem: • Which line do you think best demonstrates the speaker’s TONE in this poem. Cite your line and explain WHY you think this line best conveys the tone? • What is the mood in this poem and which lines and/or details contribute to this mood? • This poem tells a story. What line is the climax of the story? Explain why. • Where does a shift occur in the poem? Explain what changes before and after this shift? • You can do these BEFORE the focused lesson on that skill to see where students are. • OR you can do this after to see what they learned and how they paid attention. You can also uses the stems on fresh text later.

16. Putting It All Together • We use interactive notebooks, so we glue poems to the left side and do all our work on the right margin, with highlighters, and sticky notes, etc. • At the end of a study of one poem, you’ve got a page full of thinking.

17. Sample Pages

18. “Dulce et Decorum Est”

19. “Litany” • The smart boards can be cool resources for this as well. • Type up a nice version on your board and save the students’ ideas each day so you don’t lose anything. • I made a sort of all the comparisons in “Litany” and students came up and moved them into categories to see what types of images/comparisons he used. • Highlighting and annotating are great on the smart board. • Foldables are great little fun items to add in when you can. • You can still tie these poems to content. We did Litany right before reading the scene when Kate and Petruchio meet in The Taming of the Shrew.

20. Final Thoughts • The good thing about this approach is that it’s flexible. • Students will learn from studying poems. • Each lesson doesn’t have to be perfect. Eventually, you’ll settle on a few activities for that poem that really work. • You can pick up with these any time. No schedule or time limits. • You don’t have to be super serious about every single poem. Sometimes you can just read a funny one for fun. Sometimes you may NOT assess something...yes, I said it – NO ASSESSMENT. Sometimes you might just do some fun things with the text and let it be…..learning will happen whether you connect it to the test or not. • Hopefully you will remember some of your favorite poems and/or find a new favorite poet along the way. Happy Reading!

21. Reflection • What would you like to try going forward with poetry instruction in your classroom? • How can you use ideas from today’s presentation in your own classroom? What would work? What might you change or adapt? • What poems would you like to teach this year that you haven’t gotten to yet or that you haven’t ever used in the classroom? • What other ideas for poetry instruction do you have? What poetry activities have been successful in your classroom?

22. Resources • Poetry Foundation – www.poetryfoundation.org • American Academy of Poets – www.poets.org • Poetry Out Loud – www.poetryoutloud.org • The Writer’s Almanac – writersalmanac.org • Poetry 180 - http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/ • All your old college textbooks and/or poetry books you have in your classroom and/or at home. • Media Center – collections and anthologies • Students – Once you’ve done a few poems, have students search for poems that are worth looking at in class. • The Planning Guide