The lesson I was teaching was poetic devices. There is a competition in Australia called the Dorothea Mackeller poetry and the teachers have really been pushing for all students to participate. So Beats decided to work it into their assessment for the term and everyone will be writing a poem connecting this years topic, The Open Door, and the novel they just finished The Power of One." For my lesson we first discussed what they thought makes a poem a poem, then I gave a slideshow on various poetic devices that they were able to take notes on. Afterwards, I had them partner up and gave them some poems and they had to find the different examples of the devices. The last step was to have them write their own short poem using at least 4 of the devices. Since this is a high level class, the students worked quite well. I established expectations with them and created a listening cue that they responded to nearly every time. They are kids so they were a little chatty but proximity monitoring seemed to work well. Of course, many of them complained about having to write a poem and struggled to get started with it but we talked it through. For those struggling, I had them first pick a topic (I gave a couple of suggestions- dream job, family, school- but they were allowed to pick their own) then write down any thought or word they had about the topic. Then they created circles where things connected in their thoughts. The last step was to manipulate the words to fit under one of the poetic devices category. Before they knew it, they had a poem. It was a lot of fun getting to know the kids and hearing about their interests. I helped one girl write a poem about Grey's Anatomy, another about kickboxing, and one about a cow. The only thing I would've changed was a comment I made about letting them chat. My teacher pointed out later that I "had them" and therefore should've "kept them." Overall though I'd say the lesson was quite successful.
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| Talking to one of my students about how awesome her poem was |
