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Teaching Goals:
1)
Create standards-based, authentic lessons with differentiated instruction,
interactive engagement, literacy integration, technology, and life skills for
an evolving society
2) Shape lesson plans around a breadth of engagement strategies, divergent
learning styles, and perceived strengths and struggles.
3) Support the use of individuals’ background experiences, culture, and
foundational knowledge as an advantageous stepping stone in acquiring new
concepts.
4) Encourage students to reflect on key concepts in both local and global
contexts with a strong emphasis on building perspective-taking skills.
Background:
In this poetry lesson, students had been given
a pre-assessment that asked about their previous experiences, feelings, and
understandings about poetry. Most students at this age level do not believe
they are poets and some have already begun to develop negative feelings towards
the subject. With these challenges and misconceptions in hand, I decided to
approach the unit from the perspective of "everyone has a story to
tell." As in my teaching of all subject matter, I encourage students to
take risks and make mistakes; however, I realize students are more likely to
persevere through difficulties when they have first developed feelings of
belonging, support, and confidence. I also have a breadth of learning styles in
my classroom so I always try to incorporate different learning techniques such
as music, art, personal reflection/connection, partner pair/share, choral
response, Four-Square Analysis, and even connections to the teacher.
Introduction:
(15 minutes)
- Students
completed a poetry pre-assessment yesterday to gather information on what is
poetry, what does “good poetry” look/sound like, how does poetry make you feel,
what a poet wants, what a poet fears, and whether or not they believe they are
a poet and why. - Students
do not know that I used their responses to create a poem! I picked out one
phrase from every pre-assessment to form a class poemàWe are all poets now! - Read
aloud the class poem! Circle what you wrote and underline the parts that you
really like. (pair and whole-class share out) - Who
are poets? àanyone who has a
story or perspective to tell - Share
my connection with poetry: How did poetry change my life Activity: (30
minutes) - Poetry
is a way for me to tell my story and have a voice…read my poem, “Home” - Students
will underline any parts that they like the way it sounds or if it paints a
picture in their head àcall on a few
students to share - Everyone
has a story to tell, but who are these stories for? - Music
as a form of poetry - Listen
to “Invisible” by Hunter Hayes while students underline favorite parts and
circle any words or phrases that paint a picture with the lyrics - Share
with your group some of what you underlined/circled - Who
is this story written for? - Complete
Poetry Four-Square Response
Next day
follow-up lesson: - Discuss
with table what you underlined and circled and I will float around - Pick
out some key ideas from groups to tell students what I was hearing (engagement
check: how many of you said the same thing?) - Share
my favorite part: “So your confidence is quiet. To them quiet looks like
weakness but you don’t have to fight it. ‘Cause you’re strong enough to win
without the war.” àHow is
confidence quiet? What war are they talking about? - Sharing
poetry response 4 squares