Objectives:
"A poem should capture a moment, not explain it." –Ralph Fletcher
My unit's objective is to provide my third grade students with the skills needed to understand and create a "captured moment," whether it is a moment captured in words or in images. This unit of study will be integrated with our third grade social studies curriculum, Chicago History. By the end of this unit, students will be able to describe the ways in which artists tell a story about history through the use of art elements. Students will interpret how a poet creates perceptions, images, and moods through the use of devices. The student will compare and contrast history through art and history through poetry to analyze what information we can learn from both forms. Finally, students will create an ekphrastic poem based on art or an artifact in the free verse format, employing three or more of the studied poetic devices. Ekphrastic poetry is a poem about an art object – according to Merriam–Webster Dictionary, "a literary description of or commentary on a visual work of art." Free verse is a format which has no rules for word count or syllables. For students just beginning to explore poetry writing, I recommend using the free verse format. Free verse allows the student to express his or her emotions, images, and ideas clearly and freely without being bound by rhyming or rules. Third grade students tend to become overwhelmed with structure and rhyming to the point that they lose their creativity and ideas in focusing on the format.
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