It sometimes can be pretty
daunting for students to understand poems, and this fear can be translated into
dislike for poetry. So I wanted to find a website that could encourage students
to just simply appreciate the wonders of poetry within their own terms. They
could step out of what the teacher offered and venture to find a poem that they
really liked.
This website doesn’t offer a
whole lot of resources or lesson plans, but just focuses on one key idea: the
Favorite Poem Project. This project essentially just requires students to read
their favorite poem aloud and simply say something personal about them. There
are several videos that you can watch and get inspiration from them.
From an assessment point of
view, you can treat this as an informal assessment. I thought of a few
levels of assessment that one can attempt with this:
- You can assess the student’s knowledge of how the structure of a poem can contribute to the interpretation of the poem.
- So instead of having them write paragraphs on structure, rhythm and rhyme, you can listen to how the student chooses to recite the poem: does he/she pause? Does he/she read at a regular pace? Or does he/she just read it monotonously?
- You can assess the student’s interpretation of the poem.
- By telling us their personal opinion of the poem, they are getting involved with the poem. You can assess on how they are able to relate to it or why they like it can be due to several reasons. One being their ability to capture the theme of the poem, or it can be their ability to see the techniques that are used in the poem- vivid imagery. This is different from having them just write a critical analysis of the poem. Certainly, you should make it clear that personal opinions are different from a critical analysis of the poem. However, our critical analysis of the poems do have some form of personal opinions: in that your picking out of certain words would signify that you feel that these words are the key to figuring out the theme of the poem
- You can assess on the student’s ability to connect how they interpret the poem verbally (how they choose to recite it) and how they communicate their own interpretation of the poem in relation to themselves.
- This is just an overall idea: did their recital of the poem fit how they interpreted the poem?
I think this is a pretty fun
way of doing an informal assessment, and you can choose to do this after an
entire unit of poetry. It’s good to let students experiment with how they
choose to read a poem and having them express why they like a certain poem
gives them a voice that I think may be missing at times in classrooms.
Hey Lynette, this website is pretty cool! It's user-friendly and visually appealing as well. I like it that there are videos that show how teachers conduct poetry classes instead of only putting up lesson plans in black and white. It's a joy to watch and is certainly a source of inspiration for us as teachers. Thanks for sharing Lynette!
ReplyDeleteHi Lynette! I share the same sentiments about how daunting poetry can be to students! I'm still pretty intimidated by poems some time! & like Ying Kai, I think the website's really visually appealing, so it's really useful for helping teachers assess learning! Thanks for sharing the website! ^^
ReplyDeleteHi Lynette! I actually really like this site! It's very nicely organized, and I think the fact that it focuses on only one key idea, namely a favourite poem, does help to make things less daunting for students.
ReplyDeleteBut also, I feel that we often forget that poems are meant to be read out loud, and getting students to read out their favourite poems would help them to better understand some of the parameters like rhythm and rhyme, just like what you pointed out in your post!
Allowing them to choose any poem and to talk about why they like it is definitely also a way of making it more attractive to them, and it would mean that they'll find something that can relate to, and hopefully that would spark of their interest in poetry!
Love the site Lynette, and the idea that students can contribute their readings of their fav poems. As you point out, the idea can be used just to motivate students ir as a formal assessment, even across english language and lit!
ReplyDelete