Inside Out Poetry

‘Inside Out’ Poetry

I may be speaking for myself here, and if so I apologise, but isn’t it the case that we teachers of English sometimes assume that our pupils ‘know’ how to ‘read’ poetry,  when in fact they haven’t a clue?  The truth is that pupils are terrified when they are confronted with a new poem to analyse. They do not feel equal to the  challenge of  cracking the code of the inscrutable and obscure text in front of them and their response is to shut down.

As a result, I have got into the habit of approaching the poem from the inside out, starting with the  words or lexical items – the linguistic soil out of which the poem grows and only then working towards a reading of the poem as a whole. I have come to think of this approach as ‘inside out’ poetry.  At its most simple, this might involve working with a word cloud as a pre-reading exercise (see below). The pupils work in groups with the language of the poem – grouping words and anticipating themes; exploring connotations and speculating about style.  This is brilliant because it means that they have rolled up their sleeves and got the linguistic muck beneath their fingernails. It also means that they have formulated theories about the poem and they are keen to test their theories out against the poem itself. As a result,  they have a sense of ownership of the poem; they are no longer intimidated and they have already begun to engage in close analysis before they have even read the text.

If you haven’t tried this approach to and would like to you need to take a look at Wordle and ABCya. Of the two, Wordle is by far the sexiest, but it comes with a health warning: firstly, network firewalls mean that Wordle may not work in school and, secondly, you can’t save the word clouds that you make on Wordle. Instead you have to take a screen shot and paste it into Word. If you want to save it as a Jpeg, you can, but you would need to paste it into ppt and save it in the appropriate format. ABCya is a good alternative. While the word clouds that it generates are less striking than those that you can make on Wordle, it does work in school and you can save the images. Here’s one that I made earlier:

Poetry Word Cloud Made Using ABCya

 

Using Poetry to Develop Our Psychic Abilities

This is essentially a development of the ‘Inside Out’ approach to poetry and  another example of the benefits of approaching reading through the mindset of a writer (see previous posts). I would also like to think that it is in the spirit of @HYWEL_ROBERTS’ book Oops! – a book which I have found incredibly inspiring and regenerative.  In Oops,  Hwyel stresses the importance of ‘hooking’ your pupils into learning. He argues that the best way to do this is to create an imaginative context for learning and then to introduce a ‘lure’, which pupils can’t resist and which leads them into learning whether they like it or not. He also writes about the impact of ‘altering the status quo’ on pupils learning: a change in venue or routine, or anything out the ordinary tends to engage pupils’ interest and prime them for learning.  I have tried to draw on these excellent  ideas in developing the  lesson, which goes something like this:

When the pupils enter the class room they find a sealed envelope on each chair. As this is unusual, they are intrigued. They are told to place the envelope on the desk in front of them and to leave it alone for the time being. Next, in order to create an appropriately imaginative and engaging context for learning, I introduce my ‘pretend’ learning intentions. The pupils are told that the objective of the lesson is to develop their psychic abilities; the outcome is that they will be able to ‘read’  a poem in a sealed envelope. By this point, they are ‘buzzing’ – another of Hwyel’s favourite concepts.

I then explain that before exercising their psychic powers and using muscles in the mind that we rarely exercise (cross curricular connections with science?),  it is important to limber up our minds, just as they would in PE (another cross curricular link?). I then display the following words on the board:

carrot, cabbage, onion, broccoli, plum.

This is a starter activity that I have pinched from Helen Dunmore and you can find it here. Pupils have to identify the odd one out in the list. The obvious candidate is ‘plum’, because it is the only fruit, but the trick is to get them to think about any other possible odd ones out. For instance, ‘onion’ is the only one that begins with a vowel. The key is that there is no ‘right’ answer. I then display the next list and the pupils go through the same process:

happiness, wedding cake, bride, bouquet, coffin.

Odd ones out could include ‘happiness’, because it is an abstract noun, or ‘wedding cake’, because it is the only one that they can eat. There is usually some bright spark who identifies ‘funeral’ as the odd one out, because all the rest are connected with happiness. At which point, I ask them if any of them have ever been married?

Anyway, the activity works well, because of the element of competition and because it gets the pupils’ brains working  thinking about words and the way they can be categorised. It also, as Dunmore points out, nails the Literacy objectives for that lesson.

Next, I ask the pupils to take the sealed envelope, to close their eyes and to press the envelope to their foreheads, while concentrating and trying to visualise the poem. They ALL do this and I am filled with joy at the power I exert over these impressionable young minds ; ) But, seriously – is there anything better than being a teacher?

While they’ve been doing this, my helpers have been giving out envelopes filled with words. They do not know this (though some of them will suspect) , but they are the lexical or ‘content’  words from the poem in the envelope.  There are two ways of doing this. You can laboriously type the words of the poem into a table, leaving out ‘grammar’ words, like conjunctions and prepositions, into a table or you can feed the poem into a text ‘cruncher’ like this one at Teachit. However, you need Teachit works membership to access this. Failing that, I am sure that there are free text crunchers if you google for them.

 

all alone already away bed believe black blight book
both bottles call clear crime dad dead death disbelief
disconnected distance drop end ends gas get give gone
grief hear hot hour just kept key knew leather
life lock long look love mother name new number
off out pass phone popped raw renew risk rusted
same scrape she’d shopping side slippers soon still such
sure tea there’s time transport warming years

 

The next stage is for the pupils to gather the words into groups. They do this in pairs. The only rule is that they give their group of words a title. Working with the words in the table, they might identify groups of words with titles like ‘death’, ‘domesticity’ ‘loss’  or ‘time’. However, it also pays to advise them not to look for groups based on spelling or word types (abstract nouns), which they might be inclined to do, depending on how the starter activity panned out. You can differentiate by asking specific pairs to aim for a specific number of groups.

I generally allow ten to fifteen minutes for the completion of this task, after which they go pairs into fours to compare, agree and rank order the groupings that they are most pleased with. Next they feedback and, as a whole class,  we talk about the groupings: are there any surprising groups? Do they all ‘fit’ together?  Finally, we ask what a poem with these groups of words might be about.  Without realising it they are exploring the semantic field of the poem (the real learning intention).

The next step is for the pupils to use the words and their groupings to write at least five lines of ‘the’ poem. They are allowed to add additional words;  they do not have to use all of the words and they can change the tense. However, they must not attempt to rhyme. I allow them ten minutes to write without stopping. This tends to take the pressure off. After all, you can’t be expected to produce a masterpiece in ten minutes (see previous posts). Of course, if the energy is there, I allow it to run on.

Because the pupils are working with a poem ‘concentrate’ – a bit like undiluted orange squash, they write with more confidence and the results are usually very impressive. They get to experience a feeling of success. It is at this point that I ask them to open their envelopes and one pupil reads out:

Long Distance II by Tony Harrison

This poem works well because it is not too long, so the pupils will not be overwhelmed with words and there are a number of clear semantic fields.

I ask the class if any of their poems share similar ideas with the ‘real poem’ and there is always at least one poem that is close to the original. We talk about similarities and differences and then I ask why this should be the case. Is it down to psychic ability? By this time all of the pupils have caught on and it is easy to draw out the ‘real’ learning outcome – the concept of semantic field and the connection between semantic field and theme.

I have used this lesson with all key stages and have found that it delivers engagement, creativity and learning. You can, of course, discard the envelopes and the psychic window dressing and it works just as well.

Using Poetry to Revive a Tired Curriculum Part II

In the last post I outlined the ways in which we as a department have attempted to re-inject creativity into our KS3 curriculum by explicitly teaching the skills required in order to ‘make’ poetry.
For a number of reasons, we decided to focus on ‘free’ verse. Firstly, because it is difficult to write ‘good’ rhyming poetry unless you are a skilled poet: word choices are inevitably determined by the requirements of the rhyme rather than by the desire to choose the perfect word. Secondly, we have found that the lack of rules means that even the least able pupils have a fighting chance to produce something poetic, powerful and true. Where free verse is concerned, accurate spelling and punctuation are not the be all and end all. Finally, it seems to me that there are just two defining characteristics of free verse and that is the line break – which I wrote about in my last post and poetic ‘voice’, which is the subject of this post  .

Poetic Voice

Cliff Yates, in his book Jumpstart Poetry in the Secondary School, says that unless the poem is in the form of a recipe or a letter, “the poem ‘should sound like someone speaking, the person who wrote it, or the chosen narrator.” In other words, the writer needs to be aware of the sound of what they are writing, the ‘voice’ of the poem.

We decided to encourage our budding poets to think about ‘voice’ by using Peter Samson’s ‘objects game’. It is very simple and very effective. Essentially, pupils choose from a list of possible objects and, following a spot of brainstorming and mind-mapping, they write a poetic monologue from the perspective of that object. From the outset, pupils are encouraged to make decisions about the kind of ‘voice’ their object might have. Would it be angry, childlike or mournful and how this might be reflected in the language of the poem.

This is the list of objects, as it appears in Samson’s Writing Poems:

A vacuum cleaner in a shop window
A loose button on an old overcoat
A stained glass window in a derelict church
A lift in nan office block
A motorbike in pieces on a kitchen floor
A wardrobe in a hotel bedroom
A spoon in a bedsit
A bus shelter at midnight
A piece in a jigsaw of a landscape with scattered houses
A pub (P.H.) on an Ordnance Survey Map
A packet of aspirin in a bathroom cabinet
A safety match I a box in a cardigan pocket
A reading lamp on a tidy desk
A reading lamp on a cluttered desk
A roller blind in a window overlooking the sea
A paintbrush in a jar of turps

Some of these suggestions are a little bit ‘old school’ we don’t use them all and some of them we tweak to make them more relevant. However, they are carefully thought out and each of them can yield incredible results.

Getting them writing…

Getting pupils to engage with writing poetry has proved to be much easier than we imagined. Peter Samson’s advice is to keep it simple. He advocates four simple rules: “don’t stop once you’ve started; don’t rhyme because it’s a constraint; don’t write to the edge of the page otherwise it becomes a story ( so break the line where you want to place emphasis) and, most importantly, don’t worry.”
Having established these ‘rules’, we have found that is best to ask pupils to write in a concentrated fashion for short periods: 2 minutes – 10 minutes depending on the group… This time can always be extended, but the strict time constraint has the effect of encouraging pupils to take the plunge and start writing. After all, you can’ be expected to produce anything fantastic in such a short time,, so why worry!
We have also found that writing with the pupils is very important. It means that they see you taking the same creative risk that they are – and they feel supported and secure as a result.
Finally, if they are really stuck you can give them a first line. Remove this stumbling block and they’re off!

Year 8 object Poem

Drafting – less is (sometimes) more

Drafting is essential if your aim is to produce reflective writers who will ultimately become better readers. Although it is certainly the case that the first draft of a poem is sometimes the best draft, it is more often than not necessary to redraft the poem. It is a case of releasing the living poem from the draft, in much the same way as Michelangelo spoke of uncovering the statue that was already in the stone. In any case, drafting is an essential skill for all pupils to learn and drafting a poem is a good way for pupils to begin to get to grips with this key skill. We encourage pupils to be ruthless in the redrafting process, by asking pupils to begin by deleting from the poem any words that are inessential and to refine the choices and positioning of the words that remain. We might also encourage pupils to consider cutting an entire line or even a stanza. The trick is to ‘ ‘show’ and not to ‘tell’. From this point of view, sometimes less is more…

Developing More Effective Readers and Writers Through Focused Reflection

In the first post, I explained that we hoped that by becoming writers who not only wrote but drafted their poems, making conscious editorial decisions, pupils might also become expert readers – able to approach texts from the inside and to consider the editorial decisions of other writers. They would  see the texts that they encountered – not as a inexplicable, miraculous creations but as the product of a series of comprehensible editorial decisions.

This being one of our goals, it was essential that we encourage pupils to reflect on what they had done and to articulate some of the editorial decisions that they made. This is where the teacher’s own poetry comes in handy. Having agreed protocols as a group (kind, constructive and specific works well here), the teacher presents their poem to the class, explaining what she was aiming for and how she had attempted to achieve this through the creative decisions she made during the writing of the poem. The pupils are then encouraged to critique the poem, asking questions about the language of the poem. Having taken part in the critique of their teacher’s poem, they are ready to work with their peers: pupils then present their poems to a partner who  acts as a critical friend, asking questions about the poem and the process that gave rise to it  and encouraging them to articulate their creative decisions.

It’s not perfect, but we’re getting there…

 

Using Poetry to Revive a Tired Curriculum Part I

Towards the end of last academic year, I started fretting about how pupils would respond to the question, ‘What  does ‘doing’ English at Maricourt mean to you?’ Put simply, I was worried that we were in danger of becoming an exams factory. This was reinforced in my mind when one of my colleagues commented that teaching sometimes felt like ‘shovelling wet cement.’ If that was what it felt like to teach English, what must it be like to be on the receiving end? I had to face up to the situation and ask the pupils themselves. This is a sample of what they said:

 

 

It was not that there was anything especially worrying in what they said, what troubled me was what they didn’t say. They didn’t mention creativity, they didn’t mention imagination and they certainly didn’t mention inspiration! Something had to be done.

We decided that the best way to reenergise the curriculum, our teaching and the pupils would be to make ‘making’ poems central to our classroom repertoire. This would have a number of benefits. Most obviously, the focus on poetry would reintroduce that crucial, lost creativity into the curriculum. Better still, the nature of free verse meant that less able pupils could concentrate on working with the words themselves without getting hung-up about spelling and punctuation. Finally, we felt sure that encouraging pupils to become ‘writers’ would enable them to approach reading ‘from the inside.’ Having made authorial decisions themselves, they would be in a better position to get ‘beneath the bonnet’ of any text and see what makes it work from the perspective of a writer.

We decided to concentrate on structure (through the exploration of ‘line breaks’ in free verse), poetic voice and drafting. We then set about devising units for years 7,8&9. Leaving nothing to chance, we engaged the services of a local poet, Tony O’Neil, to act as poet in residence. In addition to leading poetry workshops, Tony agreed to help create an anthology of pupils’ poetry and to host an evening in the summer term, when the parents and guardians of those pupils whose work had been anthologised would come together to celebrate the work. I envisage wine, cheese and vol-au-vents (they must be due a come back)!

Anyway, I would like to use this and subsequent blogs to share with you some of the approaches we have adopted. No doubt some of them will be familiar, but I’d like to think that there might be some fresh ideas too. I should at this stage declare my sources. Cliff Yates’ book Jumpstart poetry in the Secondary School has proved to be invaluable. The book is still available from Amazon, but I have not worked out how to embed a link (sorry)!

We used the poem ‘This is Just to Say’, by William Carlos Williams as our starting point with Y7.

Tasked to answer the question, ‘What is Poetry’ and  having investigated various examples of writing in groups, the pupils decided that  one of the most fundamental differences between poetry and prose is the way in which the poet ‘breaks the line.’ I then gave out a version of  ‘This is Just to Say’ set out as a prose paragraph. The pupils were adamant that this could not be poetry, so I challenged them to experiment with different ways of ‘breaking the line’ in order to unlock the musicality of the language (Don’t worry – I didn’t present it to them in quite those terms)! We then compared our versions with Williams’ version and discussed whether or not it now qualified as poetry.

I told the class that Williams was a doctor and that one possible reason for the ‘shape’ of his poem was that it was written on a prescription note. We then talked about whether or not the pupils had ever apologised for something that they had enjoyed doing – (some cracking oral work). Pupils then worked on different shapes of coloured paper and wrote their own ‘apology’ poems.

By the end of the lesson, the classroom was awash with coloured paper and the pupils were practically clambering over their desks to read out their work. It was particularly striking that those pupils who had hitherto been reluctant writers felt empowered to take part. Because they knew that the emphasis was on choosing exactly the right word and putting it in exactly the right place and not on spelling or punctuation, they flew! I now have a number of pupils who are mad keen to write and I am excited to see how this impacts on their ability to ‘read’ poetry as ‘writers’, as opposed to just ‘readers.’