My unit that I'm currently teaching is on poetry. According to Understanding Difficulty, what makes learning poetry so difficult is the attitude and preconceptions we have about our own understanding of poetry.
So with poetry being difficult because of what we go in feeling, I thought: How can I, as an educator, get students to recognize that they've built this knowledge wall? And even more importantly, how can we together overcome it?
It struck me that humor often catches people off guard and makes them open up. This is a method I have used in other jobs as well but simply had not related it to education.The assignment we were writing was a two-sided poem. I picked a funny (to me) poem "Did I miss anything" as an example. We were working on hyperbole and each side of the poem needed to be an extreme side of the argument. Students needed another example, but even more so, they needed to see me work through one aloud so they could see that it could be done. I asked for an example of an interesting conversation. Someone said, "Bill collector?"
It was on. I only got 2-3 stanzas out before none of us could contain our laughter and they were stoked to create their own. The part really got us all was when I said, "But I can't afford ten thousand million dollars! I can't even afford a single dollar .. I live in a refrigerator box and that's only because I upgraded last year." I love hyperbole. The kids' poems were amazing: sharks threatening scuba trips, aliens invading, dogs talking. It was awesome. Here's a link to a blog I follow discussing humor in the classroom.
http://edtheory.blogspot.com/?m=1
I like how you used humor and also that you wrote a poem together first. I would like to model writing and write things as a class more, but I think that will be more comfortable for me once I have my own classroom.
ReplyDeleteI almost did not cover two-voice poems because all of the printed examples I could find were geared toward elementary students and not very good. My mentor teacher encouraged me to go ahead and teach it because students usually respond well to two-voice. I kept digging and it finally occurred to me to look for spoken word poems on YouTube. I found some great examples, and we watched the two below.
Muslim and Jewish Girls
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCUz2b050lE
Lost Voices
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpPASWlnZIA
I also used Sarah Kay and Phil Kaye's "Origin Story" with a few classes to demonstrate a different type of two-voice. To show students different ways of putting their poems on paper (one, two, or three columns), I typed portions of Phil and Sarah's "When Love Arrives." It's a great poem about the realities of love versus the myths and misconceptions about it, and they loved it when they read the line "Love Shits!"
Ha ha ha... Amazing. Thank you for sharing! I used Billy Collins' "Did I miss anything?" that Katie shared in class. It patties well with hyperbole.
DeleteLove this post and the conversation! Lovely ideas from both of you. Just a note ... "Did I Miss Anything" is on Billy Collins' Poetry 180 website, but it's actually by Tom Wayman. :-) Happy teaching, you two!
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