Teaching Strategies
Annotations
When having students read a poem, I always give them a physical copy of the poem that they can mark-up. Because my students always side-eye me when I ask for annotations, I have learned to provide them with specific guidelines to do this. First, I have students circle words they don’t know and then define them off to the margins. Next, I have them underline or highlight words or images that interest them for any reason. Off to the side of those unique words and images, write a feeling or vibe you get from it. This does not have to be academic and often can be as simple as writing down if the word or image is positive or negative. I have them box any patterns or repetition they see. Again out to the side, have them guess as to why that pattern is there or why something is being repeated. Then I have students put stars next to anything that confuses them or they don’t understand. And, no, they can’t star the whole poem. Finally, I have students write down three connections to their own lives – this really can be anything– and three questions they have specifically about the poem or text. This strategy, although commonly used in English classrooms, will be necessary for navigating our whole-class dramatic reading of “I’m Explaining a Few Things,” and their final project.
Text Connections: Author, Self, and World
This strategy is a new twist on a tried-and-true strategy. The change I am making to this is small, but will be important in terms of connection to poems of witness. So instead of a text-to-text connection where students draw parallels between two texts, I want students to connect the text- to-author, doing a little informal research about the author and what they are writing about and why, getting students to think about the author's purpose. Then, they will move on to the classic text-to-self concept which is where this “connection ties the ideas in a text to a student’s own life, ideas, and experiences.”60 Finally, students then move on to text-to-world. This is where students make larger connections from the text to world events – past, present, and future. Connecting the text to these three deeper levels will not only help with comprehension, but will be a means for understanding the author's purpose and historical context. This strategy will also create a pathway for students to identify with a text personally and then explore the impact a text has on the world.
Dramatic Reading Script Notations
This strategy can be used as a whole-class activity or a small-group activity. Either giving students a choice in a poem or providing them with just one, have students figure out how to dramatically read this poem. Students should first read the poem silently, marking any interesting imagery or particular feelings they are getting from the poem which could be combined with the annotation strategy mentioned above. Next, they should read it aloud, taking turns reading lines. Finally, students should feel like directors of a play, reading it for a third time and thinking about assigning voices or parts. When dividing up the poem in voices, students should pay attention to the punctuation of the poem and which lines make sense to be read by one voice. According to “Easy Ways to Use Performance Poetry in ELA,” you should have students look to add these directives: volume change, indicated by arrows up↑ or down↓, pace change- fast forward >>/ rewind symbols<<, repetition– highlighted the same color, paired voices– two stick figures, single voice- one stick figure, group voice– write the word “all,” sound effects - describe sound, movement – think stage directions in brackets, and tone – adjectives in parentheses.61 They should make notations for who should be speaking and how and if there are any pauses, considering how long they should be. They also need to be thinking about how certain words are said and you may call their attention to Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” performance.
Curated Lists
As a teacher, it is sometimes useful to create a list of choices for students. Although we know that they have Google at their fingertips, it is clear that they sometimes are not quite adept at searching and sometimes can give up too easily. Since choice is involved in the final activity for this unit, I will give them a curated list of witness poetry.
Teachers can give students lists of poems of witness such as these: “Wade in the Water,” by Walidah Imarisha describing Hurricane Katrina; “71 and King,” by Quraysh Ali Lansana, witnessing this part of the south side of Chicago; “The Colonel” by Carolyn Forché depicting El Salvador’s civil war; “What do I Remember of the Evacuation,” by Joy Kogawa, writing about a Japanese internment camp in Canada; “Kashoggi or Kashog-ji,” by Ammiel Alcalay, describing the aftermath of the assassination of a Saudi journalist; “The Last Lie,” by Bruce Weigl, depicting an American soldier hurtung a civilian; “Pigtails” by Tadeusz Różewicz thinking about the Holocaust; “Ghazal, After Ferguson,” by Yusef Komunyakaa expressing feelings after the Ferguson shooting; “To Praise the Mutilated World,” by Adam Zagajewski, writing a response after 9/11; “The Legend of Lilja,” by Sarah Kirsch, explaining an incident at Auschwitz; and “The Dance'' by Siamanto, about the Armenian genocide. Students can certainly find poems of witness on their own by using Google. There are two sources that might be good to have in your classroom, too. If you can purchase or check out for this unit Carolyn Forché’s Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness and the companion book Poetry of Witness: The Tradition in English 1500-2001. These might be used for students to flip through when making their choices in what poem of witness they are planning on using.
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