How do you make modern poetry interesting to the 21st Century High School Student?
The topic of our unit is modern poetry. Most students hear that they are learning about poetry and assume they will be studying dry texts, reading about flowers or love in flowing iambic pentameter. Students hear they are starting a poetry unit and are bored immediately . They tune out before the class even starts. They don’t see poetry as relevant and interesting to their life. But, that is not how modern poetry is works. With our unit, we are focusing on the multiple genres that encompass modern poetry; specifically songs, a novel, and slam poetry. With so many different forms, ones that encompasses both textual and audio learning styles, these four units of instruction should prove to be engaging for students throughout the process. By reaching out to the different ways students learn and the multimodality that is poetry, we hope to learn poetry in a way that will prove interesting to students from all fields of life.
We are starting our unit with a week focused on how poetry works throughout songwriting and performance. Students are constantly immersed in music when they are not in school, so why shouldn’t they want to spend a week immersed in school? This week will not just be an introduction to the unit as a whole, but to start student’s engagement right away. We are spending days on different types of songs, from rap, country, pop hits, to music featured on the TV show Glee. This will not just give students a wide variety of how music poetry works, but will not isolate any specific type of students. These lessons will engage both male and female. As we wrap up this week, the students will be bringing in their own song and analyzing it. Although they may not feel comfortable analyzing a work, by allowing them to focus on a topic they are passionate about they will not struggle nearly as much as they would with a poem.
We are then moving on to a novel. Although we do not associate poetry and novels, more and more novelists are using different forms to write their novel in a poetic way. The novel we chose is David Levithan The Realm of Possibility. We chose this novel not just because it is written in free verse, but because it has a wide variety of narrators, those of different genders and walks of life. This makes the novel much more accessible to our diverse classroom. The reason we decided to chose a novel instead of typical poetry is that students like a continuing story. They want to see how characters expand and grow. Many students find it more engaging to follow a continuing storyline instead of short parts of life or musings on different ideas. This novel will keep interest in a way reading typical poetry does not. We will not just be exploring how the story progresses, but also literary techniques. Students will be able to focus on literary devices more clearly in future texts by studying this unit.
We will finish our unit with slam poetry. Slam poetry is easily one of the most accessible ways of learning poetry. We are strongly appealing not only to auditory learners, but to digital learners as well, as all slam poetry is located online. Students will not only be watching slam poetry, but forming their own as well. They will learn how to prepare for a performance not just through text, but through their use of voice as well. Our conceptual unit as a whole will finish with the students gathering and performing their own slam poetry. This will allow the students to grow in their performance and writing skills throughout the unit.
We are starting our unit with a week focused on how poetry works throughout songwriting and performance. Students are constantly immersed in music when they are not in school, so why shouldn’t they want to spend a week immersed in school? This week will not just be an introduction to the unit as a whole, but to start student’s engagement right away. We are spending days on different types of songs, from rap, country, pop hits, to music featured on the TV show Glee. This will not just give students a wide variety of how music poetry works, but will not isolate any specific type of students. These lessons will engage both male and female. As we wrap up this week, the students will be bringing in their own song and analyzing it. Although they may not feel comfortable analyzing a work, by allowing them to focus on a topic they are passionate about they will not struggle nearly as much as they would with a poem.
We are then moving on to a novel. Although we do not associate poetry and novels, more and more novelists are using different forms to write their novel in a poetic way. The novel we chose is David Levithan The Realm of Possibility. We chose this novel not just because it is written in free verse, but because it has a wide variety of narrators, those of different genders and walks of life. This makes the novel much more accessible to our diverse classroom. The reason we decided to chose a novel instead of typical poetry is that students like a continuing story. They want to see how characters expand and grow. Many students find it more engaging to follow a continuing storyline instead of short parts of life or musings on different ideas. This novel will keep interest in a way reading typical poetry does not. We will not just be exploring how the story progresses, but also literary techniques. Students will be able to focus on literary devices more clearly in future texts by studying this unit.
We will finish our unit with slam poetry. Slam poetry is easily one of the most accessible ways of learning poetry. We are strongly appealing not only to auditory learners, but to digital learners as well, as all slam poetry is located online. Students will not only be watching slam poetry, but forming their own as well. They will learn how to prepare for a performance not just through text, but through their use of voice as well. Our conceptual unit as a whole will finish with the students gathering and performing their own slam poetry. This will allow the students to grow in their performance and writing skills throughout the unit.
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