Poetry Lesson Plans

Assignment 1: Media Poetry

By the end of this assignment, students will have a better understanding of ways in which they might manipulate cultural artifacts for their own creative purposes. This summative assessment attempts to build critical literacy skills by moving students out of a functional-fixedness mindset and into a mindset focused on possibilities.

First, I will provide students examples such as the Slate article using Rumsfeld's speeches as poetry() or other examples of “Found poetry”.

Example

As a class we will discuss the cultural and artistic implications of an art form such as found poetry.

Students will create their own portfolio of “found” poetry by browsing websites like Facebook and Twitter, newspapers, magazines, billboards, coupon books, movie trailers—anything they can find that is part of our mediated world. The only constraints are that they must change the original arrangement or format of the text into poetic conventions (as discussed in class) and they must title their poem something different than the original work (although the title itself does not have to be original). Poems may be typed in a word processor or cut and pasted from the original source.

Students will assemble 15-20 found poems into a portfolio. At the end of the portfolio they will write and 2-3 page reflection on the unit, discussing their own ideas about how they chose to restructure the poems, what it means to re-purpose text from different genres to fit a new one, and how the meaning changes depending on the form.

Students will share their portfolios with the class. Their grade will be negotiated with the teacher and will depend on their own self-assessment of their work and the depth of analysis present in the reflection piece.

Poetry Unit: Poetic Devices Review

Area of Interaction: We need to become critical thinkers about our artistic environments

Essential Questions: How do authors get our attention?  How do we decide what is good and bad writing?

Learning Target: I can explain what poetic devices are and create my own examples.

Agenda (50 min):

• Warm up: Do Now
  
  
• Bean bag toss Poetic Devices Review
  
  
• Create Jeopardy questions
  
  

Warm up: Do Now (5 min)

Monday, March 25, 2013

In 20 seconds, write as many poetic devices as you can think of without using the vocabulary sheet.

Transition: Now look at the yellow vocabulary sheet, which  should be in your folder.  We have extra copies, you will need one of these for the rest of our activities today.

Bean bag toss Poetic Devices Review (15 min)

We are going to review poetic devices for your quiz on Thursday/Wednesday for 7th hour.  First we are going to remind ourselves what all of these poetic devices are.

For this we need to stand in a circle around the room.  Leave the desks where they are and just make a circle outside of them.

We will first ask someone BY NAME what a specific poetic device is, then toss the bean bag across the circle to them.  They will catch the bean bag and answer.  Then they will ask a different person about a different poetic device.  Ms. Hansen and I will demonstrate.

It is important that everyone is paying attention when someone talks.  If you think you already know the poetic devices, now is a good time to check.  Please throw the bean bag like you would pass to your teammate in a game.  We are working together, not competing against each other.

Create Jeopardy questions (20 min)

http://prezi.com/a8gzlyrzpi8w/7th-hour-poetic-devices-jeopardy-made-by-1st-hour/

Now that we remember what all the poetic devices are, we will be creating Jeopardy questions.  But we can’t test ourselves using the questions we created.  That’s why we are making questions for ___ hour.  Then a different hour will be making questions for us to use tomorrow.  (Show the Prezi so they get an idea of the game again/pique interest)

Now is the time to show off how much you know about poetic devices.  Make your questions tricky (but not impossible!)  The more effort you put into thinking about good questions, the better you will probably do on the quiz yourself.

You will notice the four categories at the top of the Jeopardy board: Examples, Figurative Imagery, Literal Imagery, and Sound Devices.  Each row will work together to create five questions for the category they are assigned.  Ms. Hansen and I will walk around to help you.

Wrap up (5 min)

Tomorrow we will play Jeopardy using the questions that ___ hour created for you to study poetic devices vocabulary.  We are doing this to study for the quiz.  What day will the quiz be? (Thursday)

(If time) What kinds of questions did you com