Objectives
The main objectives for this unit are for the students to become more confident writers and speakers, write a poetry anthology and perform their monologues or rehearsed readings of original poetry for an audience. The performance expectations align directly to Pittsburgh Public Schools' Core Curriculum for eighth grade, which states that students will be able to "recognize and understand the characteristics of poetry, including rhyme, rhythm, meter and figurative language." I'll use the Elements of Literature text, our classroom text, to introduce the students to poetry. It includes a number of uncomplicated, rhyming and narrative poems that contain elements more easily understood by the learner. Students will be asked to do a number of things:
"Identify characteristics of and write a narrative poem in free verse" and "Write poetry that comes from daily experiences and emotions." Once the students know the characteristics of narrative poetry, they will read more complex poems by various authors, including Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes. They will then compose their own narrative poems based on several exercises including one that asks them to retell a dream using imagery. For another, they will borrow a poet's style and voice by mimicking the first few words of the first few lines of a poem and complete the rest of the sentences with their own words.
"Recognize and analyze the effect of various literary devices, including sound techniques and figurative language." Students will define, create an example and later practice recognition of the following poetic and sound devices: alliteration, allusion, assonance, free verse, hyperbole, metaphor, meter, onomatopoeia, personification, rhyme, rhythm, and simile.
"Identify various poetic forms, including ballads, epics, odes and sonnets" and "Recognize and analyze the ways that poets are able to use everyday language and events to convey strong emotion." To help students better understand that different poets from different eras from different backgrounds develop different poems, they will complete a one day Internet Poetry Workshop. (For more explicit detail, see Classroom Activities section.) Exposing the students to the numerous forms of poetry through this workshop will establish an appreciation for other poets' works that may have never occurred.
"Create a poetry anthology." One of the culminating projects for this unit is the poetry anthology—a collection of poetry and writings about poetry. Students will complete their own anthology that will contain mostly their own poems. The other printed document will be a class poetry anthology. While the students' individual anthologies will be comprised of their own poems and others, the class anthology will be a collection (no more than four each) of only the students' favorite poems written throughout the unit.
"Read poetry aloud." For many students, reading aloud is the equivalent of oral surgery or worse. We will, of course, read the published poetry aloud (because there is no other way to read poetry) and I'll initially take volunteers to share their newly crafted poems but then partner the shy writers with more vocal writers. Another of the culminating projects will be a performance or rehearsed reading of poetry.
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