How to Teach Poetry Workshop

1. How to Teach Poetry Workshop By Tiffany Worden Friday, October 28, 2005

2. About Me: • I graduated from the TCNJ in May 2004 • I am a second year teacher at Montgomery Middle School in Skillman, NJ. • I teach four 60-minute sixth grade language arts classes. • Our school is 5/6 “lower” middle school.

3. K: What do you know about poetry or teaching how to write poetry? W: What do you want to know about poetry or teaching how to write poetry? K - W - L

4. My Objectives This Afternoon: • To share my journey through constructing a unit of poetry. • To share methods of teaching poetry that worked well for me (and that I hope you add to your teaching tool box). • To become enthusiastic readers and writers of poetry ourselves.

5. Overview of Presentation • Answer the “why’s” of writing workshop and poetry workshop • Bring you through my poetry unit of study— a study of writing non-rhyming, contemporary poetry—introduction through assessment and reflection. • Discuss additional ways to incorporate poetry into your classroom. • Identify strategies we will use in our own classroom.

6. Why Writer’s Workshop? • To become better writers, students need a consistent chunk of time to practice writing. • In order for students to live like writers, and view themselves as writers, our class time needs to mirror what writers do in the ‘real world’. • Skills based--students learn a strategies writers use and apply it to their own writing—meaningful experience.

7. Why Genre-Based Workshop? • Students need a lens through which they learn strategies for writing; genre provides this lens. • With different genres comes opportunity different writing strategies and skills

8. Why Poetry Workshop? • Modern and contemporary poetry is written in our vernacular and is easily accessible • Economy of language: Being specific • Playing with language and using it in new and interesting ways • Striking word choice • Loaded with crafting techniques (similes, imagery, rhetorical structures) • Poetry lends itself to critical discussion about the choices writers make.

9. Why Poetry Workshop? In her book, In the Middle, Nancy Atwell writes: “teachers I knew avoided teaching poetry because they felt intimidated by it. They perceived poetry as difficult to read, difficult to understand, and, especially, difficult to talk about. They stopped reading it the moment it stopped being required. Seventy years ago half the literature taught to fourth grades in the United States was poetry. Today, it’s 97 percent prose and just 3 percent poetry. Either we love it, as I did, but can’t imagine how to begin to help students experience it…or we don’t read it and don’t love it … Poetry deserves better and kids deserve better.” (416). We need to put poetry back in our instruction!

10. Introduction to Poetry ~ Billy Collins I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out, or walk inside the poem's room and feel the walls for a light switch. I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author's name on the shore. But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means.

11. Poetry Workshop Unit: Step OneImmerse Students in the Genre • Before students can begin creating poetry, they must have a clear vision of what poetry looks like. • “We (students and teachers) spend time reading and getting to know the texts we’ll study. We make notes of things we notice about how these texts are written” ~Katie Wood Ray

12. Poetry Stations • Students are surrounded by poetry. • Differentiation at every level: interest, choice, ability, multiple intelligences. • Creates a knowledge base for your students to draw from and to refer to. • A sense of inquiry, curiosity and noticing pervades the room. • Last two-three days.

13. Poetry Stations • Create stations based on what you would like your students to know about poetry. • For me, it was important that students: • Find poems they loved reading, • Develop a connection with poetry by responding creatively to it • Poetry is about creating new and surprising images. • Poetry is meant to be read aloud.

14. Poetry Stations • Treasure Hunt • Read Aloud • Surprising Poetry Scramble • Responding to Poems Please get up and check out some of the stations!

15. Student Examples

16. Student Examples

17. Poetry Stations • Read Aloud can also become a technology station! • Academy of American Poets Website • www.poets.org

18. Poetry Stations • At the end of each class, we share what we have done during the day at the stations. • Kids share their illustrations, favorite poems, magnetic poetry they created, act out poems, and read poems aloud.

19. Poetry Workshop: Step Two“Writing Under the Influence” • Now kids have a vision of what non-rhyming, contemporary (and modern) poetry looks like. • Yet students are not ready to go off and write poems on their own. • We must find poems that can act as model/mentor texts to help guide them through the writing process.

20. Poetry Workshop: Step Two“Writing Under the Influence” • Think about how you learned to teach: Turn and talk with a partner

21. Poetry Workshop: Step Two“Writing Under the Influence” • Kids need to “apprentice” themselves to good poetry and imitate the model. • Need to borrow frameworks in which to express themselves—provides scaffolding • “Continual exposure to structure used often by professionals will produce attention to, understanding of, and with practice, normal use of such structures.” ~Don Killgallon

22. How do we go about picking mentor poems? • Read, read, read! Find some poems you love. • Try to identify the rhetorical structure in the poem and if any other poems also use that structure. • Name the type of poem yourself.

23. Poetry Types I Have Found Reading Poetry: • Narrative poems • Apology poems • Sound poems • Comparison poems • Persona poems • Question poems • Take a look at your handout!

24. Structure of Poetry Mini-lesson • Do Now/Anticipatory Set • Introduce model poem • Reading the poem like a reader • Students read poem like writers-noticing chart • Active Engagement (A “Try-it”) • Independent Workshop Time • Share • Closing

25. Let’s Try It: An Apology Poem • From Kenneth Koch’s Rose, Where Did You Get That Red? • Apology poems have “a theme children find irresistible…apologizing for something you’re really secretly glad you did. They enjoyed asserting the importance of their secret pleasure against the world of adult regulations. They apologized, and were pleased about, breaking things, taking things, forgetting and neglecting things, eating things, hitting people, and looking at things” (101).

26. Do Now: • Have you ever had to apologize for something you were not truly sorry for? • Turn and talk to your neighbor

27. Reading Like a Reader“This is Just to Say” William Carlos Williams I have eatenthe plumsthat were inthe iceboxand which you were probablysavingfor breakfastForgive methey were deliciousso sweetand so cold

28. Reading Like a Writer: What Do We Notice?“This is Just to Say” ~ William Carlos Williams I have eatenthe plumsthat were inthe iceboxand which you were probablysavingfor breakfastForgive methey were deliciousso sweetand so cold

29. Active Engagement: • Class would try one out together on board, in groups, pairs or individually on common topic/idea • Example: Sorry for being late, sorry for not doing our homework, etc.

30. Independent Workshop Time: • Please try your own apology poem as I come around to conference with you.

31. Share: • Whole group share: sit in circle and read favorite line or stanza • Partner share • Small group share • Strategy highlight share • Then, teacher would close the lesson.

32. Students’ Examples The Armadillo Please forgive me!!! I didn’t know There was a man eating Armadillo In a box that looked like It needed to be opened. If I had read the warnings on the box I wouldn’t have opened it. Please forgive me when we get you Out from that Armadillos belly.

33. Students’ Examples Escape Forgive me For splashing mud On my new gleaming white Adidas’ With coral ocean blue stripes And footpads, soft and rubbery. I was rushing away, a hurry to escape And the all out sprint never felt better.

34. Other types of poems to teach with mentor texts: • Take a look at your handout and read over some mentor poems and student examples. • What are your thoughts so far?

35. Open Workshop • Once kids have become comfortable imitating a poem’s structure and craft, they can choose their own poems to use as mentor texts.

36. Revising: Thinking About Choices Poets Make • Lines and stanzas • Experimenting with line meaning, length and stanzas • Word choice • Interesting combinations of nouns and verbs • Deleting words we don’t need • Poem titles

37. Take a poem and put it into prose form See how many different ways we can break poem into lines and stanzas and take a gallery walk Give your lines a haircut—create uniform lines Encourages enjambing—not all ideas have to start and end on the same line! Revising: Lines

38. Revising: Lines ~Let’s Try It! Lemon Tree ~Jennifer Clement If you climb a lemon tree feel the bark under your knees and feet, smell the white flowers, rub the leave in your hands. Remember, the tree is older than you are and you might find stories in its branches.

39. Revising: Lines Lemon Tree ~Jennifer Clement If you climb a lemon tree feel the bark under your knees and feet, smell the white flowers, rub the leave in your hands. Remember, the tree is older than you are and you might find stories in its branches.

40. Poetry is all about surprising and new word combinations. Idea from Image Grammar, Harry Noden Have kids brainstorm a verbs having to do with occupations: For example: cookingLet’s try it! Put them in a can and have kids randomly grab verbs to see if they can make any new, surprising combinations Revising: Word Choice

41. Revising: Word Choice: Let’s Try It! Lines of poetry that need some new noun/verb combinations: -Dinosaurs roamed the earth -Violin music fills the air (from Image Grammar) Kids Examples: Before: Blue is the waves on the ocean After: Blue smoothes out the scribbled ocean

42. Revision: Poem Titles • Method # 1: Surprising or interesting phrase from inside yourpoem • Method # 2: Use the title lead into your poem. • Method # 3: State the subject of your poem. • Method # 4: Crafty title

43. Revision: Homework • You can choose to revise throughout the writing process by assigning students to revise for these three things as homework. • Take a look in your packet for homework sheet.

44. Editing: Capitalization and Punctuation • Have kids look at a variety of poems with different capitalization and discuss affect of using capitalization. • Have students use noticing chart to help understand the uses of punctuation marks.

45. Editing: Punctuation • Some answers kids come up with using punctuation noticing chart: • Period: Stop! • Semicolon: stop a little less than a period—like a yield sign. • Colon: something important is coming • Comma: slow down, take a breath • Punctuation can happen in the middle and end of lines of poetry.

46. Final Assessment: Poetry Anthology • Take a look at example poetry anthologies! • Kids created original anthology title, artwork, dedication, and included five favorite poems.

47. Process Criteria Incorporate minilessons? Have a positive attitude in writer’s workshop? Take risks in their writing? Revise thoughtfully? Artifacts from the writing process (drafts, revisions, editing sheets, etc.) Product Criteria Specific craft Line Word choice Punctuation and capitalization Design and layout of anthology Assessment: Process and Product Rubric

48. Celebration! Creating a Community of Writers. • Celebration should mimic a book release party. • Different ways to celebrate: • Author’s share: students share their most favorite poem. • Invite guests (parents, administrators and other faculty stop in to listen). • Have food and music playing. • Have students bring in favorite poem. After a student shares, classmates can jot down a note to him/her on the back of the poem. • Put anthologies on display in your classroom library.

49. Other ways you can incorporate poetry into your classroom: • Let’s do a whip-around with other twenty ideas in your packet

50. Example of a poetry lesson in a theme-based curriculum: • Greek Myth Persona Poems • Studying Greek Mythology in History • We read Greek Myths and got to know the characters. • Created persona poems from the character’s perspective. • Let’s take a look at some examples!