Poetry Bracket
Who isn't looking for another way to approach and teach poetry with secondary students?
When I saw this idea, I was intrigued.
When I tried it, I was sold.
Hope these ideas help you as well.
Original Idea
Implementation
Behind the scenes, select poems appropriate to the group you're teaching. I selected an assortment - some from the textbook, some from my own collections with the goal of bringing in as wide a variety of voices as possible.
How it Worked
Establish the Norms
I use the Axioms of Good Poetry adapted from my senior year and XJK. Included below! Students took notes in the diagram above as we set the stage.
Whatever you do, students need a basis to work from. What makes good poetry?
These norms were used with each pair by students in the Google Form to evaluate the poems and justify their ratings.
This moved us all past the initial "I like it" or "I don't" and into real reasons and meaning.
Day One went like this in Google Classroom:
We begin with two poems about beginnings :)
Let's read the two attached poems, see what we can make out of them, and move forward from there.
READ them first. Hear a poem in your head first! Then we'll discuss and see what we can make of it.
THEN let's listen to the authors and see what layers we can peel back!
Don't forget to complete the Poem Pair Rating Google Form for this day!
Following Days
were much the same and building on each other. After we read the first pair day one, on day two we read the second pair. Day Three those winners battled it out in a Question on GC and we worked with pair Four in the Form and so on through all 16 of the poems.
This system let us do poetry and discussion and whatever technique or term I wanted to showcase and move on to other content.
Students seemed to enjoy the variety AND they read the poems more than once across multiple days. This made them delve where the might ordinarily have skimmed. Win Win.
Evaluation
Students used the Google Form to process and rate the poems in each pair. The form evolved over time to be more poem specific, but it started here.
Discuss - encourage student ownership of their educated opinions. This moves students past simple "I liked it this one" and into higher levels of thinking!
Sorting the results of a Form was easily done in the Sheet that is created and students were also more likely to complete the work on time because they wanted their vote to count!
Poetry Champ Rationale
Consider this your final, culminating activity for both the Poetry Unit and our Spring Semester :)
Over the course of this unit, we've read and re-read a total of 16 poems. In this final writing task you are to consider what stood out to you in those poems and the ultimate Championship pairing and winner (to be announced in class as soon as everyone has voted today!).
Write 3 praragraphs - using your best skills! - discussing following:
#1. 💡 Relate at least 3 of the poems we read in this unit back to the axioms that we started with. What axiom really related to which poem for you? Did starting with the axioms help you get into this or no?
#2. ✨ Reflect were you surprised by any of the match up outcomes or were you in the majority opinion? Are there any match ups that you really feel strongly about? What do you think about this process? Would you recommend doing this again? etc.
#3. 🏆 Rationale in the Championship: Why did you pick the one you picked? Relate to experience, axioms, anything you can. Why did you pick the one you picked? Did you wish another poem was in this round that didn't make it? Why do you think the Champ was the Champ? Was it the one you picked? Why do you think that was?
Show me what you're thinking :)
As completely and professionally as you can.
NTSSWTSW
Spell check
Capitalize
Title it something meaningful!
Quotation Marks around "Titles"
Reflections
10/10 Would do this again. It takes some planning but it's worth it.
Students were engaged, results were authentic, poetry was de-mystified and it was a good way to the end the year.
My only regret was that we didn't have mroe time for it all!
Related Links
Brackets
I used PrintYourBrackets.com and I'm sure there are other sites out there. For mine, I needed 16 Team, Single Elimination formats and I revisted them often.
For coaches and students already familiar with the idea, this visual takes the unfamiliar (poetry) and turns it into something familiar (sports brackets) and anytime we can do that with our students, it's a win.
Axioms
Anytime I teach poetry to any grade anywhere, I come back to these axioms from my senior year of high school.
I've developed these slides over the years as the discussion of the rational we can agree on and students take notes on a slide of their own. That slide becomes their foundation that they can refer back to throughout the unit.
Using a baseline like this (or whatever you and your class come up with) allows students to move into higher levels of thinking and appreciation.
I don't have to like a poem to say it follows these axioms. I can likewise enjoy a poem that really isn't technically that great.
Axioms such as these give readers a common vocabulary and starting point.
Many if not most of the poems I selected were easily available on this site. I linked to them in the material for each pair and so they were right there for students. No doubt, no excuses. Easy to read and re-read as needed for us all.
I also included YouTube videos anytime I could. Authors reading their own works or the dramatizations produced by others of the poems we were working with enhanced the time we spent. Hearing Gwendolyn Brooks talk about and read We Real Cool is a whole other level!
I wanted students to hear the poem in their heads first, hear it out loud in a variety of ways and experience it.
English 9
5th Hour
Spring of 2022
COMPLETED BRACKET
