Introduction
"The little girl had the making of a poet in her who said, being told to be sure of her meaning before she spoke: How can I know what I think till I see what I say?" So said Graham Wallas (1858-1932).
He meant that thought doesn't really exist until it is in words. What you want to say may be well and good but can you understand it? I remember when I was a little girl I had to learn how to read using the books called "Dick and Jane". These books said the same sentence over, adding a new sentence from time to time. This is one of the ways I learned to read. I also learned to read from my older sibling teaching me how to read. I would read the same story over and over again. When I was getting help in learning to read, I simply thought I was getting a story read to me, and of course I enjoyed one fact— that this was not the school's book. So reading to me was a constant repetition. This is still the best way to teach students to read today. Reciting the nursery rhymes, the poems that were presented to me as a child to memorize, helped me learn to read. So I have a personal interest in teaching reading connected to poetry. The nursery rhyme, as I remember, was what taught me to read the days of the month and the alphabet, for example. This is how my students will learn to read in this unit. They will repeat sound patterns until they grow familiar and can start to produce thought— the thoughts of others as we read them and our own thoughts as we write them.
This unit was developed under William Lampson Professor Paul H. Fry. In his seminar, "Reading Poetry: Pictures, People, Places and Things," I learned about ecphrastic poetry. The word ecphrastic is Greek and means telling all. It is poetry related to visual art or it's a work of art based on another work of art. This type of poetry requires that the poet place himself within the art piece. This can be done through a variety of poetic approaches such as: speculating, portraying, explaining and perceiving. There are two things involved when doing ecphrastic poetry. One is the art work and the other is the response to the art work. It is the creation of this dialogue that makes this type of poetry intriguing. The dialogue creates the ecphrastic poem. Sometimes the poem will try to match the image to the text. It gives it the quality of a voice. In my meetings and personal discussions with Professor Fry, we talked about the relevancy of this seminar to my unit and the patterns that are seen in this type of poetry and others. I found our conversations informing and directional. The direction I will take is actually the opposite. I will be reading poetry and my students will be drawing pictures about that poetry. This is basically due to the developmental stage of my students. Now let's discuss in more detail how I plan to introduce all of this into my classroom.
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