Group+Poetry

I. Concerns: Include: Status of final performance-based assessment (GRASPS) Assessment is a work of progress. It is gettting upgraded. The students will learn to explain, interpret, apply, empathize, reflect, and get a new perspective on poetry and how it impacts them and society. Include: Status of sequence (6-Facets and WHERETO) Student will will know where they are headed and why? (1)The students are creating the poetry project throught the study of poetic elements and terminology and analysis of music which will prepare each student to develop a poetry project through Wiki or another site. The students will have a model example of the project done by the teacher. (2) Include: Web 2.0 tool or tools: How is that working? Is it going to facilitate learning? I will be using the Wiki and other sites that have strong multimedia applications that will incorporate images, music, and creative writing.

II. What is going well? The group collaboration and the new opportunities that have been discovered on the Wiki and other sites to enhance my poetry project. III. Next steps: What do you need? More time to master and navigate the Wiki and other sites to prepare me to make a stronger project and unit. EXIT SLIP for August Class for group === Concerns: The topic our group has selected is very broad and I am still thinking along an individual level. Should we all be following the same format or is it okay that my lessons are set up differently? ===

Needs: More collaboration with group members to determine if I am going in the right direction or if I need to adjust my approaches and lessons.
Go off on you own for the next week or so then discuss this with your group matesthreough email, on the phone or in person. You don't need their approval just a chance to think with others about what students need to know about poetry.

180 Poems (one a day) for high school students by former poet laureate at [] I put the first one at the bottom of this page. It's worth a glance.
See below--new feature from the NY Times. I thought Brendan might like this. [] Weekly pairings of poetry with the news from the NY times. Here's a sample with suggested questions for students:

New Feature: Poetry Pairings
By KATHERINE SCHULTEN Illustration by Melissa Sweet [|Go to a 2008 review of a children’s book about poet William Carlos Williams »]

It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there. –William Carlos Williams, from [|“Asphodel, That Greeny Flower”]

On The Learning Network, we’re big believers that there should be more poetry in everyday American life. So when we chanced on a Web site called [|American Life in Poetry], naturally we were curious. Turns out, the people at American Life in Poetry and the organization that supports them, the [|Poetry Foundation,] offer a free weekly poetry column for newspapers to republish. They do this solely to promote poetry and, as they write, “to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture.” Well, we’d like to help foster that “vigorous presence.” So we’re teaming up with American Life in Poetry to offer something a little different: not only the weekly column – which consists of a poem and a short introduction to it by former U.S. poet laureate Ted Kooser – but also a piece from The Times that in some way echoes, extends or challenges the words and themes of the poem.

This week, to kick off the new feature, we’ve chosen a Times essay called “Dad Yields the Last Word” to pair with the poem “Fishing, His Birthday.” [|You can find this first “pairing” here.] We invite you and your students or children to come regularly and tell us what you think of each week’s selection, or suggest other Times photos or articles that could be paired with the poem instead — or do any of the other activities we suggest below. Let us know how it went!



Teaching and Learning Ideas For Any Poetry-News Pairing
//Questions:// — Why do you think this poem was paired with this photo and article from The Times? What do the two have in common? — Which do you like best: the poem, the image or the article? Why? — What does this pairing say about life today? Do you think someone looking at it 25 years from now would “get” the same meaning? What about 100 years from now? — What other Times photos or articles could also have been paired with this poem? Why? — What other works of literature, film, or fine art can you think of that also echo, expand or even challenge the words and ideas of this poem? //Activities:// — Write a dialogue between the poet and the photographer, or the poet and the journalist, or between something in the photo or article and something in the poem. — Take a picture of your own to illustrate this poem. — Write a poem of your own in response to this photograph and/or article. — Put the words of the poem into a tool like [|Wordle] to see the “word cloud” that emerges, then do the same with the text of the article. What important words, if any, do the two have in common? Does the word cloud make you see the themes, ideas or subjects of each more clearly? How?

**Poem** //Equipment. I like to paint and draw, and I own enough art supplies to start my own store. And for every hobby there are lots of supplies that seem essential. In this poem we get a whole tackle box full of equipment from Michael Sowder, who lives and fishes in Utah.// —Ted Kooser By Michael Sowder With adams, caddis, tricos, light cahills, blue-wing olives, royal coachmen, chartreuse trudes, green drakes, blue duns, black gnats, Nancy quills, Joe’s hoppers, yellow humpies, purple chutes, prince nymphs, pheasant tails, Eileen’s hare’s ears, telicos, flashbacks, Jennifer’s muddlers, Frank bugs, sow bugs, zug bugs, autumn splendors, woolly worms, black buggers, Kay’s gold zuddlers, clippers, tippet, floatant, spools of leader, tin shot, lead shot, hemostats, needle nose, rod, reel, vest, net, boots, cap, shades and waders, gortex shell and one bent Macanudo— I wade in a swirl of May-colored water, cast a fine gray quill, the last tie of my father.
 * Fishing, His Birthday**

**Times Selection** In [|“Dad Yields the Last Word,”] Generation B columnist Michael Winerip, who has written for several years about life as a parent and a baby boomer, announces that he is being reassigned to a new beat. For his final column, however, he allows one of his sons, Sam, to “give his side” and tell what having Mr. Winerip for a father was //really// like. Here’s how Sam begins:

This is being written to give you firsthand proof of my dad’s uniquely bizarre parenting system that made us who we are today, but not always intentionally. I will attempt to illustrate his confusingly liberal but strangely confining restrictions throughout my childhood.

“Fishing, His Birthday” copyright ©2009 by Michael Sowder, from his most recent book of poetry, “The Empty Boat,” Truman State University Press, 2004. Reprinted by permission of Michael Sowder. A most engaging, resource rich site for poetry: articles, recordings, videos, poetry readings []

And have you seen the poet's circle on the EC NIng? They discuss one new poem a week: []

Sara: Doña Josefina Counsels Doña Concepción Before Entering Sears BY Maurice Kilwein Guevara Animated poem read by the poet. 02:30 It is a woman's poem. And wonderful.

[]
Deb They have a wonderful selection of "children's and young adult poetry."http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poetrytool.html Select the "Children" button.

About the Teeth of Sharks
by John Ciardi John Ciardi

The thing about a shark is—teeth, One row above, one row beneath. Now take a close look. Do you find It has another row behind? Still closer—here, I’ll hold your hat: Has it a third row behind that? Now look in and...Look out! Oh my, I’ll //never// know now! Well, goodbye.

John Ciardi, "About the Teeth of Sharks" from //You Read to Me, I'll Read to You// (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1962). Copyright © 1962 by John Ciardi. Used by permission of the Ciardi Family Publishing Trust.

Source: //You Read to Me, I'll Read to You// (1962)

===Graphic Organizer for How to Read a Poem with annotations for Frost's "Nothing Gold Can Stay." media type="custom" key="6471199""Hope is the thing with feathers" placed in Worldle, a Web 2.0 free site at Wordle.com where you can paste words and the words that appear more frequently in the passage, appear larger in Wordle. [] Brief videos of people reading and talking about their favorite poems. Part of a poetry project. It's worth a visit to the site. Check this discussion out. Someone is asking your question about pairing literature with song. [] This site has CD's with recordings already paired to literature. [] This data base attached above is very extensive. It comes from the ECNing, and as it says, matches some novels as well as poems with contemporary music. I paired Dylan Thomas' "Hunchback in the Park" with Jethro Tull's "Aqualung." In addition when the class began discussing sound and sense, I used Blues Traveler's "Hook" as a way of showing how we can be misled by the sound/music of a song and completely miss its sense. The melody of "Hook" is lyrical and lilting. From Wikipedia: "In the introduction, sings, "It doesn't matter what I say / So long as I sing with / That makes you feel that I'll convey / Some inner truth of vast reflection. The song's own hook is the familiar harmonic structure of 's ///Pachelbel's_Canon in D//, which forms the basic chord progression of the song.[1][2]The song also references the story of Peter Pan and his arch-nemesis Captain Hook (a second meaning to the title). In the song Popper also sings "no matter how much Peter loved her, what made the Pan refuse to grow, was that the Hook brings you back".Every time I've used this song and specically asked students to take notes so that they can fully explain the song, they become mezmerized by the music, and say, "It's a romantic song." Deb Brady media type="custom" key="6508199"===

The hook... On that you can rely

 * [[image:http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/images/001.gif width="69" height="34" caption="Poem Number 1"]] || =Introduction to Poetry=

Billy Collins
I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out, or walk inside the poem's room and feel the walls for a light switch. I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author's name on the shore. But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means. ||

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