The big highlight for this block was the 50% practicum. I was in a rural classroom with students who were most exited about art, dirt bikes, and farm animals. I love art, and, farm animals and dirt-bikes so I had a great time connecting with students. Teaching kids who like dirt-bikes at the end of a twisty windy road was also a great excuse to bring my motorcycle to work as often as I could. I learned a ton, including how to start breaking down and tackling longer term planning. This practice will prove incredibly valuable in my upcoming 10 week practicum.
During the 4 weeks I also got to challenge myself by sharing my love of poetry in a poetry unit for the students. In this class were many talented artists. Some of the sketches and painting coming out of the room was really impressive. This group did struggle with literacy and writing in general and so poetry was going to be a brave thing to try teaching as my language arts experience. I’m happy to report it actually went really well and being brave created some opportunities for a growth and a bunch of highlights from my time teaching there.
To introduce poetry I needed a base line for where my learners where at. Much like math, students often have an emotional response to the idea of poetry. This response is often tried to past experiences. My goals, beyond curricular learning intentions of creative writing, were to make poetry fun and non – threatening. I’ve won poetry jams in art towns, been published in anthologies, and was paid to read at for an online event during covid. In my kind of professional opinion, poetry takes its self very seriously. It has an air about it. I don’t think that’s a good way to teach it or share it with others. It’s an image problem that’s easy to reinforce accidentally. So on our first poetry day I started with a lesson on list poems. I didn’t explain it right away. Instead I said, “I’ve written a poem. I’d like to write it on the board and hear your thoughts about it.” I proceeded to write a grocery list. I intentionally turned my back to the room so the students couldn’t read me for clues. As I started writing I heard a student yell out, “It’s a list!” By the time I had finished writing it on the board the room was buzzing. While I was certainly doing a bit, the key understanding of poetry as something fun and engaging made its way through. This was my introduction to poetry and a lesson I’m still quite proud of.
The other big success in poetry learning was blackout poetry. Students got to create poems by blacking out words from a page they themselves got to tear out of a book. I was lucky enough to be formally observed for this lesson. I used children’s novels my partner no longer wanted. The children’s part is key because I don’t have time to read 8 books to check for bad words and I’ve heard some horror stories. I started by sharing “The Stranger”, Gord Downie’s blackout poem about Channie Wejack. A kind of heavy start, but valuable, and a good way to bring in more perspectives. We then created a blackout poem together using a document camera before the students got to tear open books themselves. This was a practice in I do, We do, You do. What I saw was a room of early intermediate students with varying reading abilities immediately start reading pages from the books I’d distributed. I had the group eagerly reading and creating. I closed the lesson by quietly reading the poem’s they created. This ended up quieting the room perfectly for transition. What’s even better is blackout poetry became an early finishers option. Students who often struggled in language arts were actively asking if they could make another poem.
