After the End, Barry Lane Chapter 13: “Words in Collision”, revising poems
Jigsaw Assignment 7-20-10
Lane states that he notices two types of poetry in our schools: The kind kids write and the kind they learn to write. In the younger grades he feels their poetry is full of imagination and life. As they get older it is more flowery, contrived and more like the poetry of greeting cards. He does not blame teachers but rather poets and cultural attitudes toward poetry.
Three activities that can be used for writing poetry in the classroom:
Geof Hewitt, Vermont poet, never mentions poetry when he gives this assignment:
Collaborative Poetry
1. Students write down a phrase that describes an observation made between waking up and arriving at school. They have twenty-two seconds to do this.
2. Each student is asked to read their phrase.
3. The teacher takes dictation, writing one phrase per line on the board.
4. Read all the phrases as if they were a poem and ask the class to define what was just read.
5. Explain that you have just written a collaborative poem. Everyone copies it down in their notebooks and they can revise it any way they want to.
6. Model the editing and revising processes right in fro of the students on the board. Do what ever it takes: cut out phrases, add words, remove lines, etc. Keep all drafts of the poetry.
7. Share the edited poems. Look at the differences and similarities.
This can be a fun chance to play with words. The words are not all your own so it can be easier to let go of them and try something else. Lane show how he edited it and how Geof Hewitt edited it—both very different. Children have a natural love of playing with words. Lane talks about Verandah Porche, a poet that carries a heart shaped tin with her that contains thousands of words. She will give a class a prompt and then give them a fistful of words to play with. The students love it.
Verandah Porche: Wordboxing
1. Make photocopies of books you have read with the class or student stories or anything else you’d want to use. Slice up all the words and put the into your chose vessel.
2. Read students some playful poems and tell them that poets play with words on the page like toys on the floor. Tell them you are going to teach them to do the same and the poems don’t have to make sense. They don’t have to use all the words and they can trade. The poems don’t have to rhyme.
3. After finishing the poem they need to write it down.
4. Share the poems.
5. Suggest they try rearranging the same word into another poem.
Spinoffs:
1. Have students pick nouns, adjectives, and verbs from their individual piles of words. Write a familiar piece of writing on the board, like the Pledge of Allegiance. Go through the piece with the class identifying the parts of speech. Erase them and put in N for noun, A for adjective, and V for verb. Now go around the class and substitute another word for each part of speech.
2. Collect a bunch of words that rhyme and make a special wordbox. You may want to have the children write the words. Ask the students to arrange nonsense poems that rhyme.
3. Teach the students what an image is by using poems. Create an imagebox on a theme (war and peace). The box will contain images of war and peace. You can add images from published poets as well.
Each student takes a handful of images and arranges a poem.
4. Using a video camera, tape close-ups f students’ faces as they say what their observations are. Experiment with other forms, such as concept poems, where a word like peace is repeated after five images or peaceful words.
5. Students write a poem that depends on a title to fill in the information like this one:
Ode to a lost Brain Cell
Where did I put it?
It was here
I know it
Think, think, think
6. Have students write a poem that is a dialogue between tow people (p183)
7. Ask students to write a poem that begins with a question they sometimes ask themselves (p.184) (why do dogs roll on dead things?)
8. Conduct poetry readings regularly. Students stand 1-3 at a time and present.
9. Have students revise “Roses are Red” poems to make them lose the predictable rhyme and get more interesting. Examples on p. 184.
10. Teach metaphor with this fill in the blank exercise:
_____________is a ________________
(feeling) (noun)
Anger is a hissing cat.
11. Have students write a poem about a landscape inside them. Example on page 185: Wishes.
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