A (Remote) Exploration of Poetry: Week Two

Hello, friends,

It’s another week of distance learning — and boy, are we all learning. To tell you the truth, I’m grateful for the distraction of the learning right now. Less time to surf the news. 🙂

This week, my students will be thinking about line and stanza breaks and how poets do this intentionally to add to the meaning of their words.

Here are some things for you to use to help your students explore and write poetry this week:

(These were previously shared as live Google Docs to make it easier for you to make a copy and edit to meet the needs of your students. However, as individuals have been making changes to the original docs, I have had to lock them down as PDFs.)

• This week’s mini-lesson + writing invitation is from my incredible colleague Margaret Ann Hazelton. It uses Margarita Engle’s poem Tula [“Books Are Door-Shaped”] as an invitation for students to write about an object with special meaning. (Copy of “Tula [Books are door-shaped]” by Margarita Engle)
• Students are doing guided annotation:
  •   “The Quiet World” by Jeffrey McDaniel .  (Copy of _The Quiet World_ by Jeffrey McDaniel)
  • “genetics” by Jacqueline Woodson (Copy of _genetics_ by Jacqueline Woodson)

We found both of these poems and smart lessons on Brett Vogelsinger’s Go Poems blog!

• My students are also doing some color-marking this week to work at the word-level of the poem while thinking about line and stanza breaks. Then they are discussing (You will need to set up your own Flipgrids for discussion!)
  • Discussion 1: “The Quiet World” (Copy of Week 2 _ Discussion _The Quiet World_)
  • Discussion 2: Color-Marking the final words of all three poems (Week 2 _ Discussion on All Three Poems)

Be well, teacher friends. We’re doing good work. We’re doing the best work we can do these days.

Best wishes for a peaceful, healthy week,

Rebekah