Patricia M. Sorrentino
There are many reasons this unit needs and incorporates poetry. First, rap lyrics are a form of poetry. If a teacher, like myself with inner-city students who listen to nothing but rap, truly wants to have a high percentage of student engagement in her class, then allowing the students' interests to enter into the classroom's curriculum is the best way possible.
Second, "traditional" poetry looks like rap to our students. They are both short, have distinct elements, such as rhyme and/or wordplay, and have a huge message to send in few words. While longer pieces of literature have some of the shared literary elements, novels or even short stories can lose the interest and attention of students if they feel the author is taking too many pages to express only a couple of main ideas.
Thirdly, one of the most important reasons this unit uses poetry is because of daily planning. Each class's focus can be a new poem or rap lyric. This keeps each class exciting and new to my students, but also makes my planning easier. Teaching in a school with extremely high truancy rates means I do not see the same students every day, which makes it hard to live out an ongoing lesson or novel because I am constantly trying to catch students up. This takes a lot of time and bores other students who might have not been absent. While some poems can be long and extensive, it will best benefit my students to choose a poem of average length for any one given class period. However, it is important to note that this unit does progress over a long period of time, so while students will not miss too much if they miss one class on one given day, if they are frequently absent, they will not learn the fundamentals well enough to complete the increasingly challenging assignments. This unit is by no means an easy unit for students, but simply complements a classroom with truancy issues well.
