Zoila M. Brown
The month of May is reserved for composing poems. These workshops will be conducted three days each week. Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School has a technology center to accommodate an entire class. Each classroom is also equipped with four to six computers so the students have easy access. Teachers who do not have computers for all students to use at once may set up writing centers in their classrooms and have students rotate or sign up for computer time. The workshops will be set up with tools and technology for writing. Students will be provided with several children's books on poetry and other relevant subjects, post-it notes, computers installed with word processing software, pens, pencils, and markers. Students should also have a special section of their notebook for poetry writing workshop. I will encourage students to select books from the library and use the post-it notes as bookmarks for poems they like or would like to share. They may also download or bookmark their favorite poems from the Internet. By this time of the year most skills and strategies in all disciplines would have already been taught. Also, students would have had a great deal of practice using language devices, forms and patterns, and the elements of poetry. Each week's workshops will highlight one of these features: poems on pictures, places, and people relating to the concepts they encounter in other disciplines. This will assist students in developing and improving their comprehension, creative thinking, and usage of literary devices. The activities in the workshop will include independent and collaborative writing, peer conferences, teacher conference and mini-lessons. Students are expected to write at least one poem each week. They will have the freedom to compose any of the three forms: free verse, ballad, or narrative in the form of couplet rhymes.
Poems about Pictures
Day One
Use Shirley McPhillips' interesting insights to teach writing poetry based on pictures. In A Note Slipped Under the Door, she uses Cynthia Rylant's poem, "Photograph" as a mentor poem along with Walker Evans' photograph- a piece from a collection about the Great Depression. A section of the poem reads.
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….even though he didn't have
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nothing good to hold in his hands,
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nor even a dog to sit by his chair.
She read several poems by Rylant to the class so the students could get the poet's voice and a sense of the poet's style. Shirley also briefly explained the Great Depression to set a background to the poem. Afterwards the students speculated why the poet chose that picture when they were so many others. She went on to have students bring in photos about themselves and discussed their associations and how they were attached to their photos. My intended purpose is for students to use poetry as a vehicle to convey what they learn across disciplines, so the personal photos are not very appealing to me. However, since students have included personal photos in their autobiographies (according to the specifications), this could be a good way of reflecting on the beginning of the year.
Day Two
I will have various pictures depicting themes from social studies and science. Students would have already gained background knowledge from their studies of these themes during the previous months. McPhillips identifies four phases in the structure of Rylant's poem that could be used as a guide for writing poems about pictures.
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1) Backs up a moment- the character's action prior to being snapped.
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2) Internal thought- the character's thoughts about the photographer.
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3) Details- at least two things the character lacks that makes him wonder why the photographer has interest in him.
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4) Speculation- the character thinks that there is certainly something about him that interests the photographer.
This structure seems to work well for pictures that include people. One would have to work out a different structure for pictures that do not include people. I would guide students to think of the time period and the events that occurred during that period. We would speculate about the photographer's interest in the setting and the impact the picture has on our lives.
Day Three
It would be interesting to compare the outcomes of having one group of students compose poems from a given picture, and another group draws pictures from the newly composed poems. Since I interact with at least four groups of students, another group could draw pictures from the original poem. Eventually, all this work could be compared with the original poem and its original work of art. Teachers in self-contained classes may set up learning centers for each of my three proposed activities. Another extension could be a guided tour at an art gallery with specific paintings to study. This would probably be more appropriate for the upper grades, especially if students do not have easy access to prints of the paintings. Grade five students may have difficulty remembering the paintings, although note taking should be done. However, if photographs or slides are available at school, the task would be more feasible and more effective. There are also many websites that offer works of art.
Poems about Places
Many children have connections to a special place. Students sometimes write essays about their favorite hideaways or a special place they like to go on vacation.
Day One
During the first workshop about places, teachers may talk about places they remember or somewhere that brings nostalgic feelings. Read aloud a poem about a place. "Lincoln Park" written by Myra Cohn Livingston (Worlds I Know and Other Poems, page 37) makes an appropriate historic connection. The first stanza reads:
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If you go up North Second
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and walk to the left
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you can see where Lincoln stood
Another of Myra's poem, "My Cousin's Dollhouse", may be used with a more social connection. Have students quickly sketch in their notebooks what they visualize from the
poems. Take a few moments for students to share their sketches, then discuss any line from the poem that seems to be reflected in many sketches. Talk about the objects that represent these places. For example, in "Lincoln Park", the object is the monument. In "My Cousin's Dollhouse" it's a doll. Here are few lines from the first stanza.
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In the dollhouse
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in the brown room
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sits a doll.
Day Two
Students should come to this workshop with a place in mind for which they have some connection. Encourage but do not compel students to think about a museum or other significant buildings in their town or state. During the second workshop, have students generate ideas and images about their places of choice. A few questions students should keep in mind are:
What do I see or hear in this place?
How do I feel when I go there?
What happens here?
How is this place connected to me, or to something I hear or read about?
Students may do research using reference materials, technology, or personal inquiries.
Day Three
Students should put their ideas together, giving factual and specific details in poetic form. Encourage the use of similes and metaphors. Always have students share before each session ends. Extend the composition for homework assignment.
Poems about People
Writing poems about people will stem from biographies. "Biographies help children develop an understanding of historical periods and the people who contributed to them. Poetry enhances that understanding of the people and the times." (Three Voices, pages 92-93.) Students would have studied biographies during Black History and Women's
History months and perhaps at other times and in other disciplines. Some of these biographies will be reserved for this series of workshops.
Day One
Students should brainstorm names of people they encounter in their studies, such as scientists, mathematicians, civil rights leaders, astronauts, or explorers. Read a one-page biography to students. Then on chart paper, write separate lines for each significant detail about that person's life. Each student could supply one fact. Review the nature of the details- the important events, the contributions to life, the determination, discouragement, and the feelings or sense of personal change they evoke. Students may want to jot these details down in their poetry notebooks. Remind students of the Ballad of Abraham Lincoln and the Washington poem. Read one of these again and analyze it, looking for the details mentioned above. Return to the chart paper and collaboratively work with students to rearrange the lines into poetic form on an overhead transparency. Do a mini-lesson on line breaks. Experiment with line breaks by placing them at different parts in the text, each time having the students read aloud, pausing for meaning, suspense, or to slow down.
Day Two
Student pairs browse through historical fiction, informational books, and biographies in books and on the Internet to choose a person as their subject. They look for important events in their subjects' lives and note them in their poetry notebook.
Day Three
Pairs of students work together to write a poem about their subject. This is a good time to write
free verse
poems. They should not worry about rhyming, as this may distort the truth about their subject.
The last week in May will be devoted entirely to revision of students' compositions, although there would have been continuous conferencing among students and between teacher and students, prior to this week. Revision can be very demanding, but is necessary in order to produce pieces that deserve to be published. In her book, For the Good of the Earth and Sun, Georgia Heard lists suggestions to help students distance themselves from their poems and take a critical stance. To ensure that their poems are carefully revised the students should:
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- Delete unnecessary words, phrases, or sections.
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- Replace a string of words with one word, when possible.
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- Break the lines in different places to see what works best.
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- Rearrange lines or stanzas.
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- Use the active voice rather than the passive, where possible.
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- Experiment with several titles until they find one that has the most effective connection to the poem.
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- Be sure to have an ending that gives a feeling of completion. Examine the poem to see if an effective ending is misplaced.
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- Check the mechanics of the English, especially spelling.
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- Type a clean copy.
Assessment & Evaluation
At the close of the workshop, students will complete a self-evaluation. Students and teachers could work together to create rubrics for the finished products. A single rubric could be designed to show a column for the students' self- evaluation and one for the teacher's evaluation based on the criteria established by the teacher.