Andy's Inquiry 3 Notes

What happened?

     I believe my Guide Lead Teaching was successful for numerous reasons. Before teaching it I was a bit uneasy about the topic. My students loved to write and they were good at but I did not know how they would accept poetry and the idea of writing it. Also, there is not any common core state standards related that focus on poetry. The standards I used for my unit involved things you would do when writing poetry. For example, when writing poetry, your poems may contain rhymes. Therefore, I used the common core state standard, “RL.2.4 Describe how words and phrases (e.g., regular beats, alliteration, rhymes, repeated lines) supply rhythm and meaning in a story, poem, or song” because I would be teaching the students rhymes in the process. Also, poetry may include detailed pictures about the written work. I used the common core state standard “RI.2.7 Explain how specific images contribute to and clarify a text”. Students would compose detailed pictures to accompany their poems. These standards were things that students would learn in the process of learning to write poetry. My overall objective for the unit was “Given a wide range of diverse poetry and how it is read, students will be able to write and recite their own poetry, later to be published in a class poetry book”. I was very optimistic entering the teaching of my unit and my optimism was fulfilled by results.

    First, I would like to reflect on my students learning based on the Common Core Standards I focused on. The first lesson I taught was rhymes. Learning how to use and identify rhyming words would be key during this unit. Many of the styles of poems we would be using involved rhymes. After the first lesson, students were to complete a worksheet in which they had to come up with five rhyming words for a given word. Looking at the results, few students were able to do so. This led me to alter my teaching methods. To accommodate the students I then taught a lesson in which I would teach students strategies on how to come up with words that rhyme with one another. This was very beneficial as students began to develop rhyming words with ease. The second standard was easy to accomplish. My students were accustomed to including pictures with their writings. The only difference with the poetry writing was that students had to include more detail in their pictures so that it really conveyed what their writings were expressing. The students responded to this well because it gave them a reason to really express themselves in drawing. Both of the standards were met during the unit.

    The writing was the most impressive part of the unit. This was the part I was very concerned about. I was not very optimistic at first about how students would respond to poetry. They seemed to really enjoy it. I would often get requests from students to read certain poems again. I believe the biggest thing that motivated students to write poetry is that I read them poems that I had written myself. I felt that because I loved and enjoyed writing the poems, so did the students. Students were writing many small poems (Triplets and Couplets) and having fun with it. One poem from a student showed me that she understand the concepts and was able to have fun and imagination in her writing. She wrote a Triplet by the name of Cool Dog.  The Triplet was “I have a cool dog, who likes to blog, while he sits on his cool log”. This was common in many of the students writing. They all grasped the concepts of the poems and rhymes and were able to come up with some really witty and thoughtful poems. I know by the end of the unit students learned a new style of writing. 

What else happened?

   When developing the poetry unit I reflected on my past. When I was a child I love to write poetry. The types of poems I wrote about were fun and imaginative. Rarely did I write about something that was serious or that I put my personal feelings into. I figured these are the types of poems I would read to my students which would lead them to write such poems. I also figured they would struggle with the understanding of deeper poems. During and right before the poetry unit I had a change of heart. I could not rid the students of this type of poetry. One day I decided read the students a poem called One Day in Baltimore. The poem tells about a young African American boy who visits Baltimore. During his stay in Baltimore he was called a racial slur by someone of another race. For the rest of his stay in Baltimore he could not think about anything else as he had felt bad. The poem was very heartfelt and much different than the poems we had been reading. The students were able to give their thoughts, opinions, and feelings about the poem. My unit would change from here.

   I introduced students to free verse poetry. Free verse is a format I introduced allowing students to write as they pleased, no rhyme, no format. This type of poetry was not a focus in my objectives or standards. I gave students examples of how to write them and then I let them write as they pleased. The students were able to really express feelings in their writing.. They were to write works that included plenty of feeling. The students really revealed some things about themselves that were deep. Some of them had no poetic rhythm but to see that students were writing with feelings was a good thing to see while poetic rhythm could be addressed later. I had a student write about how her parents consistently break promises. The ending line of that poem was “I would be happy if they kept just one promise”. It was really impressive to see this because I did not think students at this age could handle this type of writing. I think that students are now aware that they can write about feelings in any of their writings. Most students tend to write about positive moments in their life or nonfiction stories. This allowed them to write about things that made them mad, sad , cry or  even just a bad experience. I think this also occurred because I read students a poem I wrote that described a time when I was really sad. I think it let students know that it was okay to write about things like this. Students were encouraged to write as they never had before. This part of the poetry unit was a good twist that I did not expect to happen at all.

What this might mean?

    I learned a lot about myself and the students during the unit. I believe the number one thing I learned about students in general is that I should never underestimate my students. In preparing for this unit I did not think students could handle the deeper and more meaningful poems but yet students could and were able to write their own. The unit did and did not proceed as expected. I believed that students would enjoy the readings of the poems but I did not believe they would get into writing them as much as they did. I had a parent tell me that her daughter had written a poem at home to show her and she did not believe that the poem was written by her daughter. Expressing myself to the students through my own poetry was the biggest aid in getting them to write the poetry. My connection with my students gave them the needed encouragement and motivation to really try something new. That speaks to the ideal that teachers must create a strong bond with their students to be very successful.

    The most challenging part of my unit relates to the state standards and assessing. The school’s curriculum did not prohibit me from doing the writing units as writing is pretty open in the curriculum but the state standards did. I struggled with the purpose for why students should learn poetry. If it was not in the state standards how could I really make a case for it? Since there were no state standards for it, my core practice, which focused on assessments, was difficult to do. I could assess students on things such as rhymes and detailed pictures according to the standards but I could not assess their poetry according to a standard. I had to pretty much create a standard myself. This shows that the standards need to be developed further because I believe poetry is something that all students should be learning as it gives them a superb writing outlet.  

    Overall, I believe my unit went really well. By the end of the unit students had learned different ways to write poetry, both formatted and not formatted. I was glad I was able to introduce the students to a form of writing that they could enjoy and have fun with as well as be very serious with and express a lot of feelings. I also learned a lot about myself and my dealings with students that will be very beneficial for my teaching career.