Unit Objectives
This unit will provide students with additional opportunities to express themselves through poetry. They will read poetry with various themes, they will write poems using these themes as a guide, they will create portfolios to store their work, and they will share their work. Additionally, this unit will also introduce students to canonical poets and different poetic styles.
Cross Curricular Activities
I also intend students to engage in cross curricular activities like social studies by learning about the lives of the poets whose poetry we will read and analyze. Additionally, they will learn about the events that influenced their writing. In class, students will learn simple biographical information about poets like place and date of birth, where they lived during the course of their lives, where they went to school, and where or if they received a college education. To differentiate the unit for students who perform above grade level (e.g. gifted and talented students), I will include project work that will require a more in depth study of the poets and the events that influenced their writings. These projects will be presented to the class. Students who are part of the school's inclusion program will be asked to create bio-boards (poster boards with biographical information) that contain pictures of a single poet and poems written by that poet.
Poetry Reading and Writing
I will begin the unit by reading poetry that expresses common themes: the pains of youth, the problems with family, and troubles in society. I will use poems that express these themes to model poetry writing activities that students will engage in during the first poetry writing workshops. This will set the tone for the rest of the weekly workshops.
Others themes that I plan to use during weekly poetry writing workshop are: Empathy, Human Values, Citizenship, Friendship, and Resolving Conflicts.
The first goal of my unit is to expose students to poetry that deals with the issues of youth, family and society. The four poems selected to serve this purpose are: "John, Who is Poor" by Gwendolyn Brooks, "Children's Rhymes" by Langston Hughes, "Dark People" by Kattie M. Cumbo, and "You Know, Joe" by Ray Durem. These poems will be used as models to introduce students to the poetry writing workshop. We will have a whole class discussion about the poets' intent and the poets' style. I will give students books that contain biographical information about each poet. They will be asked to find the poets' place and date of birth, where they lived during the course of their life, where they went to school, and where or if they received a college education. I will provide students with the details and instructions for the workshop and state the ultimate goal, which is to publish and perform their best works during a school assembly. As a group, we will write a poem.
The next goal will be for students to create a process portfolio to maintain their work. The portfolio will be used to assess and evaluate student works. At the end of the unit, students will select their best works and prepare them for publishing. They will be asked to add art work that corresponds to each theme.
Portfolios
During each weekly poetry reading and writing session, students will listen to and/or read poetry written by a particular author. We will then examine what the author's intended message is by extracting the obvious but suggesting the tacit. There will be three divisions in the portfolios:
- Author study – students will document basic information about the poet like name, date of birth, place of birth, education, and where and why they began writing poetry.
- Themes – students will document the general themes discussed while reading poetry during class and create graphic organizers to list characteristics of the themes.
- My Poetry – students will use information from the "Themes" section to create their own works.
Presentation
Finally, during the month of February, the school always has a program to celebrate Black History month. My final goal is to use the program as an opportunity to present students' work to an audience. As I did with some of the classics read during my senior high school years, I will require students to memorize their poems.
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