Seamless Transition

By Susie Rogers, ELA 5th-8th

Poetry usually emits moans out of students, but when it connects one unit of study to another in a seamless transition, my students didn’t even realize they were hooked until it was too late! That is a winning teacher moment! I introduced my students to the classic novel, The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. They were enthralled from day one. We analyzed the time period, vocabulary, the characters, and the theme.  We compared and contrasted then and now with cliques, family dynamics, and teen issues. They loved this novel and hated to see it come to an end; however, I told them it didn’t have to  just yet. In the novel, an allegory of Robert Frost’s poem, “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” was referenced with the relationship between Ponyboy and Johnny. I began our poetry unit with that poem, and it helped them ease into figurative language, rhyme schemes, and symbols.

Students were able to explore poetry through a digital break-out, a matching game, and a black-out poetry project. The students were challenged with breaking codes, analyzing stanzas, and applying knowledge to create abstract art. Students were asked to create a Black-Out poem using a newspaper article and paint. They were challenged to find words that “spoke” to them and that would create a “found poem.” This proved to be a very difficult task for some as they struggled with finding words instead of creating them. They were forced to rely on words in print and make a connection between them. The end results were funny, thought-provoking, sad, and real.  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, an English poet, once stated “Poetry: the best words in the best,” and my students learned that lesson this past week.