Entry #9: Poetry and the Arts - Getting Students to By-In

Students tend to shy away from poetry partly because it is intimidating. “In the not-so-distant past, some people thought 'poetry was best left in the hands of experts, those deemed knowledgeable enough to decipher and interpret the enigmatic language,' but fortunately poetry has changed and students can personally connect to many contemporary poetry (Bucher and Hinton 300). With that in mind, Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson paired with Big Talk: Poetry for Four Voices by Paul Fleischman would be an excellent way to engage students in poetry because they encourage students to read poems aloud and make personal connections to poetry.

I would start my poetry unit using Big Talk: Poetry for Four Voices by Paul Fleischman to tie in the arts with drama standards because as many would argue, poems are meant to be read aloud (Buchman and Hinton 307). WV state standards say students should be able to demonstrate a focus on concentration, observation and believable action necessary to sustain a character, improvisation or scene (TH.O.L1.2.02.), as well as experiment with a variety of ways to use the body and voice to react to actions and given situations in solo, partner and group improvisations and performances (TH.O.L1.2.02). By starting the unit with Big Talk, students would easily be meeting the above standards when they recite the poem. Big Talk is a collection of poems that are written for four people to recite. Each voice is highlighted in a different color so that the readers can tell which lines they should read. The teacher could have students get in groups of four, choose a poem, and begin practicing. Groups would recite the poem in front of the class. Being sure to meet the criteria for using their voices and bodies. This would provide a great discussion about how much fun reading and listening to poetry can be and how doing so helps to make personal connections, as well as gain a deeper understanding and appreciation for a piece of poetry.

Students would then, be given Brown Girl Dreaming and asked to while the were reading, look for poems that spoke to them because they either begged to be read aloud or because the student made a personal connection with it. During class, the teacher could read aloud individual poems from the book or have students get in pairs to read poems to each other. Together the class could discuss how the poem was read, their individual impressions and about different ways of interpreting the poem. One such poem I would use for this exercise is “Writing 2.” I specifically love the line “The song makes me think of Greenville and Brookly – the two worlds my heart lives in now. I am writing the lyrics down, trying to catch each word before it's gone” (Woodson 220). Almost everyone can relate to feeling like they belong in two worlds. The class and I could discuss what it means to us; what we think it meant to Jackie. I would ask the students to take note of when I paused and used infliction as I read the poem aloud, as well as ask if anyone would like to also read it aloud, perhaps slightly different than I did. Through the time spent modeling reading aloud and practicing how to have these types of conversation, the students would feel more comfortable doing so themselves. Students could then, be put in groups of four in order to engage in authentic poetry discussions, where they discuss the poem, take turns reading the poem in various interpretive ways, share general impressions, work individually or take notes on their impressions of the poem, share their ideas, and finally, take time to reach a group consensus about a poem (Bucher and Hinton 308). Using these types of activities, the teacher would have many opportunities to expose students to discussions on a lot of the poems within the book while meeting standards in both English and theater.

Through exposure of listening and reading poems out loud, students would begin to see the emotion and personal connections that can be made in poetry. The emotion would evoke good conversations about digging deeply into the poems for meaning and interpretation. By starting with Big Talk: Poetry for Four Voices by Paul Fleischman, the excitement of reading aloud would provoke to engage even the most reluctant poetry readers. Followed up with the authentic poetry discussions that would accompany Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson , this would create the perfect pairing for hooking students on poetry because students would be encouraged to read poems aloud and make personal connections to poetry.

Works Cited

Bucher, Katherine and KaoVonia Hinton. Young Adult Literature: Exploration, Evaluation and Appreciation. 3^rd ed. Boston: Pearson, 2014. Print.

Fleischman, Paul. Big Talk: Poems for Four Voices. Cambridge: Candlewick Press, 2000.

Woodson, Jacqueline. Brown Girl Dreaming. New York: Penguin Random House Company, 2014. Electronic.

West Virginia Department of Education. “WV State Standards.” WVDE. 19 June 2015. Web.