Overview
This unit will use devices to strengthen spoken word poetry for students using poems that have been in the literary canon for years as well as some poems that are new to students and the school district. Students will be given the opportunity to create new works as they become engaged in the message, the sounds, and the meanings of words in the context of lines of verse. More importantly, students will gain a deeper understanding of word choice for rhythmical interpretations, purposes of rhyme, theme, tone, and literary devices. Using my students' passion with rap lyrics, we will study the depth of lyrical poetry of rap masters who have been given acclaim for their writing skills, sense of sound, and attention to current and past cultural dilemmas, social issues and world or community events.
Students will become engaged in applying the use of the literary terms as found in poetry analysis in order for them to have a framework for the writing they will read, hear, produce and review. Lyric form and patterns in poetry will be included as a large segment of the analysis of poetry students will delve into while interacting with this unit. This will open students' awareness of syncopation in lexis regarding meter and tone. In this way, students will use a sufficient amount of the procedural canon from the School District of Philadelphia's Planning and Scheduling Timeline.
As I myself am a lover of the art of creating/writing, performing and crafting poems as a creative art, I will expose students to varied types, styles, and authors of poems. I will offer my students opportunity to widen their knowledge of the expressive art as it relates to them in their own community. This unit serves students in a high school setting on all academic levels. It will be used more specifically in ninth and twelfth grade English Language Arts classes but can be altered to suit a framework for an after school poets' club, too.
I will use this unit to congregate the class into a communication community through poetry in order to achieve symphonic synchronization as an aspect of speech in whole and in part, similar to an orchestra. Using the varied collective voices of the classroom, as a choice, I will explore with students the art of choral poetics using aspects of sound sense, multiple vocal and expressive sounds, and most importantly the individual message as it relates to the community - my students' community. This will give students opportunity to connect to others who might sometimes seem as if they are alone in our large high school society. Students will use poems that have been created by famous and not-so famous authors to begin to become comfortable with speaking in front of others and in gaining a sense of sound as words have been printed on the page - bringing life into their printed space.
This unit is also created to provide support for struggling readers and self-conscious speakers in the classroom. This will be done in an effort to provide more opportunity that will build confidence through fluency. It is another goal of this unit that the applied strategies will transfer learning of reading and writing to students' understanding of other advanced text. The symphony of voices used in a whole class or in groups will increase students' vocabulary knowledge, increase their enjoyment and engagement of printed literature, and will motivate students to reread text.
As a part of the unit's goals, students will be guided in writing symphonic selections of poetry citing specific voices for particular verse and stanzas, this strategy will be explored to give way for students to express their feelings, make known their opinions, and tell their points of view in a more effective mode of communication in a public forum. The unit will activate a foreground for choral reading of poetry and other literary text. This unit's goal is to invite students to become a community that harbors less conflict and more bonding through sound and writing. This will lend itself to teaching tone in which every poet speaks1 — representing the inner, mental and emotional experience.
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