Poetry and Public Life

Strategies

Georgia Heard in HeartMaps created a way to engage students in writing poetry, using heart-shaped paper, for students to write about things that are close to their heart.  She models her own heart map, which has in the center those people that are closest to her – her family and relatives.  In sections around the center, she adds places, things, art, travel spots, and friends that are close to her heart.  Students are guided to create their own heart map including things and people that are important to them.  Students would then create a poem about themselves.  Heard offers ten ideas for making heart maps.  I would also use “My Writer’s Heart Map, which offers students a way to write about their favorite authors, books, poems, words, and ideas.  They would then write a poem about their favorite writers and books.

Finally, I would use the  “Home is Where My Heart Is Heart Map” in which students create a heart map of a place that is special to them, a place that their family lives, a place where they first did something, a place that they visited, a unique and interesting landmark, or an inspiring place in nature. Students would create a poem about their favorite places, which would serve as an introduction to writing poetry about their neighborhood.

Kenneth Koch in Rose, Where Did You Get That Red? created a unique way to teach children’s poetry.  Instead of teaching types of poems, rhymes, rhythms, and meter, etc., Koch uses “poetry ideas.”  Instead of using children’s poetry as examples for his students to imitate, he uses adult poetry.  He will take a poem such as “The Tyger” by William Blake and show students that Blake is asking the tiger questions about what makes it such a fearful and awesome creature.  Koch then gives students a poetry idea, “Write a poem in which you are talking to a beautiful and mysterious creature and you can ask it anything you want – anything. You have the power to do this because you can speak its secret language.”⁸  I can imagine how excited his students were to get started writing.  By using poetry ideas, his students were able to create poems, not by copying the poet’s style, but by taking the poet’s ideas for writing the poem. 

In this unit, students will be exposed to poems that will help them to put into words what living in a big city is like.  Using Koch’s “poetry ideas,” students will read and analyze poems that will help them to look at their city in different ways.  The idea of using poetry ideas will be introduced through Jack Prelutsky’s poems in Ride a Purple Pelican.  These poems for children use either a city or state in many of the poems.  One poem, “Oh Pennington Poe,” is a simple poem about things that are not working, for instance, “your auto won’t go, your truck is so rusty it’s stuck in the snow.”⁹  These things can be found in a city so as a class we could use this poetry idea of things that don’t look well or work right in our city and create a poem.  I would use one or two more of the poems in this book, “Grandma Bear from Delaware” and “One Day in Oklahoma” and use these poetry ideas: 1) write about someone you typically see when you are walking in your neighborhood – what are they doing?  2) write about what you hear when you are walking down the street you live on – what do you hear?

Koch has some great poetry ideas that are connected with adult poems.  Here are some additional ideas I will use in my classroom: 1) write a poem about something not supposed to be beautiful but which you secretly think is, 2) write a poem about an ideal city – what would it look like? Sound like?  Feel like? 3) write a poem inviting people to your city, 4) write a poem asking the city how it got the way it did, and 5) write a poem which looks at the city in 13 different ways. 

Once students have been exposed to poetry ideas and public poetry, they will go outside for a neighborhood walk and/or if you have a large playground use this area.  Before going out, introduce students to a modified (for elementary school) version of “A Map To the Town” taken from Poetry of Place: Helping Students Write Their Worlds (see sample in the Appendix).¹⁰  This exercise will help students to use poetry ideas such as finding opposites, writing about an object that is smaller than a breadbox, choosing a direction and write what you see, and choose a color you are wearing and write about something around you that has the same color.  If technology, such as tablets or phones is available, students will be able to take pictures of these images to take back to class. Once they return to the classroom, have students write out their poems and share in small groups or partnerships.

Before I take my students out to see other parts of our city, I would model using a poetry idea from an adult poem by introducing them to Rudyard Kipling’s  “Philadelphia,” the first line of which reads, “If you’re off to Philadelphia in the morning, You mustn’t take my stories for a guide.”  Using the poetry idea – what stories do you tell about living in Philadelphia today?  Ask students to share stories in small groups by creating a mind map.  A mind map is a web that is completed in silence in a small group setting.  I would have a piece of chart paper for each group and a stack of larger post it notes.  The center circle of the web would have Philadelphia Stories with lines extending out from the circle where students would place their post it note.  Students would write a short story (paragraph) that they would share with someone living outside Philadelphia and would be typical of Philadelphia (example may be – once we got stuck on the trolley because the track was blocked by a broken down car and we had to find another way home.)  Each student would write their stories quietly then place them on the web.  Once completed, the students in the group would read each other’s stories, which would become a part of our “Philadelphia” poem.  As a class we would make a list of the positive things you can find or do in Philadelphia today.  Examples would be Fairmount Park, July 4^th fireworks, concerts, picnics in the park and by the river, museums, etc.  We would then create a class poem of Philadelphia. 

Once students have really looked at how they see Philadelphia and their neighborhood, students will take a school trip to an historic part of Philadelphia.  For our class, this will be either in conjunction with History Hunters, a program for teachers and students to visit Historic Germantown including Cliveden where the Battle of Germantown took place, or the Constitutional Walking Tour to visit historic sites such as Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, Ben Franklin’s homes, etc. They will go with their poetry notebooks and be given time to write about what they see, what they do not see, what they hear and what they feel about this section of the city.  Here again, they will be able to use tablets or phones to take pictures of the images that they felt were important. If possible, they will informally interview tourists to ask them of their view of Philadelphia as an outsider to use in writing their own poem.  They will use these observations and reflections for their next poems.

In Carl Sandburg’s poem called “Chicago,” he wrote about what Chicago is famous for and contrasts that with how outsiders see the city.  He challenges them to find the ideal city and finishes with his experience of Chicago, what he knows to be true – about the hard-working people who scrape out of the city enough not only to survive but also to make them proud of their city.  A poetry idea for students would be to write a poem about what Philadelphia is famous for (brotherly love, liberty bell, Benjamin Franklin, etc.) and how they view Philadelphia from their experience living in the city so far.

Another idea, perhaps for fifth graders, is to look up websites such as  “10 Philadelphia Stereotypes That Are Completely Accurate,” written by a man from Detroit, or another website that talks about Philadelphia.  You could not show all of this website to fourth graders but it is funny and you can use some of the information, such as: Philadelphians are the most ruthless sports fans in America, Philadelphians have an attitude to them, Philadelphians are obsessed with Rocky, and Cheesesteak-Philadelphians adore it.¹¹  Students could also interview people on our walking tour – tourists from other states and countries -- to get outsiders’ perspectives on the city. 

Taking the poetry idea – to write a poem about what Philadelphia is famous for and contrasting that with how they themselves see their city -- students can use the information from their walking tour by circling key words in their journal entries to use for the first stanza or part of their poem.  What sticks out for them? Liberty Bell? Independence Hall?  Students would then take what they wrote about their neighborhood and use that for the next stanza or part of their poem.  The final stanza or part can be their choice – how people who live in their neighborhood feel about living in the city or how students feel about their experience living in the city.

Walt Whitman’s poem, entitled, “The Great City,” will be read aloud, while students read along. After discussing the purpose of the poem and its tone, students will work together in small groups to complete a T-chart on chart paper listing what Philadelphia is on one side and what it is not on the other side.  Groups will share out ideas and post lists.  The poetry idea is to write about what Philadelphia is not – for example, not the most expensive city to live in, not the easiest to drive around, not the place of the tallest building in America, etc. and what the city is, where the Liberty Bell lives, where the best libraries and museums live, etc.  Students will use the posted lists to create a poem of what Philadelphia is and what it is not.

As a final activity, students will create a podcast of one of their poems.  Practicing their poem before reciting it will strengthen their speaking skills. They will be able to choose their favorite poem to read aloud.  Once all of the students are completed, we will view the podcast as a class, which will strengthen their listening skills.  Students will use accountable talk strategies to comment on each other’s poems.