“Socially and emotionally maladjusted” (S.E.M.) is a term used to describe students who have emotional/behavioral problems which adversely affect their learning. This unit will be aimed at a group of S.E.M. middle school students residing in an urban setting. These “special” students live in an area with special problems.
Too often we as teachers get so involved in teaching subject matter that we overlook the needs of the student. The basic need of the middle school youngster is to be long, to feel a part of the world he or she lives in.
We can make them feel more a part of our world by showing an understanding and appreciation for the things they believe to be important such as music, television, sex, and even violence and drugs. We may not be able to comfortably address all of these issues, but we may be able to meet them on their level by addressing at least one of the areas.
After we have found a common ground maybe we can really teach our students something. We may not teach everything we dreamed of , nor may we be able to teach the way we dreamed of teaching, but we will be teaching. Isn’t teaching what we want to do ? We must be gluttons for punishment.
It requires some creativity to keep the attention of
any
middle school student for more than ten consecutive minutes. The S.E.M. youth like most middle school “ youngins” do have more important things on their minds (ie., sex, drugs, and television). At least they are more important to them.
We as teachers must continuously seek new ways to entice our students to listen what we have to say about reading, writing, and arithmetic. The objectives of this unit are as follows:
-
1. to enhance the reading curriculum
-
2. to improve reading and writing skills
-
3. to teach the appreciation of poetry
-
4. to serve as a basis for affective education
Many public schools have moved away from poetry in recent years. There is much emphasis on prose yet little on poetry. In past years poetry was given more consideration in the classrooms. Students recited poems after spending days memorizing stanzas. Today a few poems are thrown in between pages of prose in reading textbooks, with a reference here and there to similes and metaphors, and little else.
The ability to speak and write effectively are important assets. A knowledge of poetry can help to acquire these much needed skills, a feeling for poetry influences both writing and speaking. It gives one the desire to put words together descriptively and effectively.
The unit will be implemented at the beginning of October and is expected to be completed by Christmas break. I will use the unit two days a week for two consecutive 45 minute periods to enhance the regular curriculum. The unit will be composed of three sections:
-
1. Listening to and reading lyrics to Rap, pop, and Gospel music.
-
2. Reading poetry and using some poems as a basis for affective education.
-
3. Writing poetry.
Each section will be preceded by related vocabulary. This is necessary because many of the students are reading at about a third grade reading level. I will begin the unit by spending two weeks listening to lyrics to popular music such as Rap (which is very popular with today’s youth), Pop, and Gospel.
My reason for introducing poetry by listening to lyrics to songs is simply to say to the students, “hey, you already have an interest in poetry. I now want to expand your knowledge of the subject.” The students already enjoy reading rap lyrics to a musical beat; hopefully they will transfer this interest to developing a poem of their own and recite it before their classmates.
“Fresh” Rap personalities are constantly changing but I intend to use the lyrics of Slick Rick. He is popular with the students right now. Cool Moe Dee, and The Fat Boys are other Rap personalities. I will not include them in my unit unless they are suggested by the students. A
Teenage Love
by Slick Rick will be the song I will use to open my unit. The second Rap song will be chosen by the class. Next, we will review the lyrics to a Pop tune by Stevie Wonder,
Village Ghetto Land
. Lastly, during this section, we will listen to and discuss the lyrics of a
Lift Every Voice and Sing
by James Weldon Johnson. The focus of the first section will be to bring to the students, attention to the effect the music has on the lyrics. There will also be some emphasis on the message of the lyrics. I might ask the students if the message changed after hearing the lyrics with the music. Reading the lyrics to a song should give the student an appreciation for how writing begins. Whether one is writing a poem, a story, or a song they each begin with a single thought.
The next section is poetry reading, I will chose poems which are on or about the third grade reading level. There are usually various reading levels in a special education classroom, but the third grade level is comprehended by most students in the middle school. A list of vocabulary words will be reviewed before reading the poems. The list of words will be made up of vocabulary found in the poems to be read during this section.
Here is a list of the poems I will use in this section:
|
Adams, P. Franklin
|
The Rich Man
|
|
Aldis, Dorothy
|
Blum
|
|
Angelou, Maya
|
No Loser, No Weeper
|
|
|
Alone
|
|
|
Woman Work
|
|
|
On Aging
|
|
Benet, Rosemary
|
Nancy Hanks
|
|
Benet, Rosemary and
|
Abragam Lincoln
|
Stephen Vincent
|
Burgess, Gelett
|
I Wish My Room Had A Floor
|
|
Frost, Robert
|
Stopping by Woods on a
|
|
|
Snowy Evening
|
|
Hughes, Langston
|
Mother to Son
|
|
|
I, Too
|
|
|
My People
|
|
|
Hope
|
|
Hughes, Langston
|
Kid in The Park
|
|
|
What?
|
|
|
Gone Boy
|
|
|
Mama and Daughter
|
|
|
Ballad of The Landlord
|
|
|
Harlem
|
|
|
Freedom’s Plow
|
|
James, Emmanuel A.
|
A Small Discovery
|
|
Mckuen, Rod
|
Two
|
|
|
Me and The Cat
|
|
Miller, Mary Britton
|
Cat
|
|
Prelutsky, Jack
|
The Hippopotamus
|
The students will be exposed to various types of poems happy, sad, long, short, rhyme, and free style. During this section of the unit students will also be required to memorize poems. Initially the entire class will memorize the same poem,
My People
by Langston Hughes. Each student will recite the poem before the class. Later, the students will be able to chose a poem of their own to recite. After the students recite poems they will be critiqued by their peers. Teacher should model the appropriate way to comment on others work.
There is another aspect of this section, it is the use of some poems to discuss feelings. As you may already know the S.E.M. student usually meets with a social worker or psychologist for approximately half an hour per week. This time is used to discuss alternative ways of dealing with their feelings. The S.E.M. child usually handles frustration, anger, or unhappiness by acting out behaviors like fighting, throwing things, and yelling. Poets address feelings in their work. For instance, in
Harlem
Langston Hughes talks about the frustration of not realizing a dream. I plan to use this poem and others like it to guide my students into talking about their aspiration, goals, dealing with failure, and obstacles. By using poetry the students can feel free to talk about emotions without owning the emotion.
Out of all the poets I have read Langston Hughes’ poems depict the situations most identified with by urban youth. Hughes discusses parent/child relationships, drug abuse, religion, loneliness, and many other aspects of city life.
The last section, which I believe will be the most fun, will involve writing poetry. We will spend 4 or 5 weeks on this section. My techniques for teaching poetry have been influenced by Kenneth Koch’s book Wishes, Lies, And Dreams. I will begin this section by asking students to write a collaborative poem. The next poem will be written individually. They will be asked to write about a particular idea. Kenneth Koch called the idea a “poetry idea”. According to Koch “A poetry idea should be easy to understand , it should be immediately interesting, and it should bring something new in the children’s poem; this could be new subject matter, new sense of awareness, new experience of language or poetic form.” The first poem my students will write individually will be a comparison poem. The students must put a comparison and a sound in every line. Another type of poem the class will write is called a dream poem. I will emphasize that dreams are sometimes hard to make sense of and so their poems do not have to make sense either. The class will be given the opportunity to read their poems aloud one by one. Each student will be(I have about eight students) required to make some constructive comment. There will be time for revisions. The class will be given 2 weeks to write a poem using a “poetry idea” of their choice. The idea can be one that the students creates. By the end of this section the students should have completed at least 3 poems.
