3-12, Creative Thinking, Language Arts, Writing

Golden Shovel Poetry

Gwendolyn Brooks published the poem, “We Real Cool,” in 1963. In 2010, Terrance Hayes published a poem called, “The Golden Shovel.” If I was teaching a poetry unit, I would have my students read both poems and see what they notice before suggesting a direct relationship. Students would probably immediately recognize the title of Hayes’ poem appears in the second line of Brooks’. But it would be fun to see how long it takes them to see that Terrance Hayes actually structured his poem around Brooks’ by making each word in her poem the last word in each line of his poem — in order.

With “The Golden Shovel,” Hayes created a new poetic form, and it’s one of those challenges that compels and delights students with its opportunity for creativity through constraint. Take your favorite poem, favorite sentence from a book, or favorite passage from an article, even a newspaper headline and use each word, in order, as the last word for each line in your new poem. Be sure to credit the original author, but don’t limit yourself to their subject. You can see a perfect video explanation from the North Vancouver City Library for their “Teen Tuesday” series of how to write a Golden Shovel poem here. The Poetry Society offers a good lesson plan here.

Here is another example of a Golden Shovel poem, written by Michelle Kogan, and built from the words of the poem, “I Dream a World,” by Langston Hughes. If you want to see some work from actual students, this page shares some Golden Shovel poetry written by 5th and 6th graders based on poems by Gwendolyn Brooks.

Golden Shovel Poetry reminds me of the Found and Parallel Poetry that I used to do with my students, often resulting in pieces that surprised all of us with their insight. I’ll definitely be adding this link to my Poetry Wakelet Collection, and I would love to see any examples that your students write!

Side note: Wouldn’t it be fun to do a Poetry Out Loud presentation or something similar, and award one or two students these cute little golden shovel utensils?

light landscape nature sky
K-12, Teaching Tools

April Holidays and Celebrations

April begins next Friday, and I’ve gathered together as many resources as I can to help you with upcoming holidays and celebrations. Two exciting ones to note are that April is both National Poetry Month and School Library Month (TCEA just published an excellent post on this!). I have links to honor both of those in my April Wakelet. April 1st happens to be April Fool’s Day and the beginning of Ramadan, which are also included in the collection. Moving forward, there are: International Children’s Book Day (April 2), Passover (Begins April 15), Easter (April 17), and Earth Day (April 22).

(I want to note that these monthly Wakelet collections are in columns with headings for the holidays. It may appear differently according to your device. On my phone, for example, I can can just swipe to see all of the columns, whereas on my laptop I may need to scroll to or mouse over the bottom in order to access the horizontal bar that allows me to scroll to the right. As holidays come and go, I try to put the next celebration near the “front of the line” so you don’t have to scroll as much to find it.)

I’ll be adding new links as I find them to the April Wakelet, as I do with all of my collections. Follow me on my main page if you want to keep updated!

white graphing notebook
Photo by Bich Tran on Pexels.com

K-12, Language Arts, Science, Videos

Reimagine, Recreate, Restore

The beautiful poem, “Reimagine, Recreate, Restore” was written and performed by Jordan Sanchez for World Environment Day this month. You can’t help but feel inspired to get up each day and do something positive to preserve our beautiful world. I will be adding this to my poetry Wakelet, which also includes this blog post on Spoken Word poetry. To learn more about Jordan Sanchez, visit her website where you can also find other examples of her incredible work.

Image by ejaugsburg from Pixabay
ethnic worker writing in notebook in house room
Anti-Racism, Books, Creative Thinking, K-12, Language Arts, Writing

LatiNext Poetry Project

April is National Poetry Month in the United States, and it is not too late to celebrate! You may remember when I posted about the Teach Living Poets site way back in January right after being blown away by Amanda Gorman’s recitation of the poem she wrote for the Inauguration. Scott Bayer (@LyricalSwordz), who contributes to the Teach Living Poets site, tweeted out this amazing interactive Google Doc of poetry and accompanying lessons for Latinx poets featured in the publication, LatiNext, from Haymarket Books. Next to each of the eleven poets’ portraits, is a link to a detailed lesson plan, and a link to an interactive image made with Genially that provides even more resources. Kudos to Scott Bayer and Joel Garza (@JoelRGarza) for putting together this excellent compilation of meaningful activities submitted by participants in #TheBookChat. In addition, thanks to the @breakbeatpoets editors, @_joseolivarez @WilliePerdomo and @writeantiracist!

For more Poetry links, visit my Wakelet here. I also have Wakelets for learning about Amanda Gorman and Anti-Racism.

Creative Thinking, K-12, Language Arts, Writing

Spoken Word Poetry

With the excellent example of Amanda Gorman reciting her poem during this year’s Inauguration, I have a feeling there will be an uptick of interest in authoring and performing spoken word poetry. Of course, spoken word poetry has experienced waves of popularity over the years as you can read in this article from 2020, or see in this collection of videos from Edutopia in 2014. But, as Professor Kathleen M. Alley states, “When I heard Amanda Gorman recite her poem, “The Hill We Climb,” at President Biden’s inauguration, I instantly decided to throw my plans for the week out the window. I hope teachers throughout the nation will similarly be willing to put their regular lesson plans aside in order to seize the opportunity to use the poetry of Gorman to engage with students who are not much younger in age.”

To begin a unit on spoken word poetry, a teacher might use one of Amanda Gorman’s videos, a selection from the Edutopia link above, or perhaps one from this list curated by Amanda Cardenas. You can find advice on writing spoken word poetry from Masterclass, writer Tonya Thompson, and educator Shannon Reed. Lesson plans include this one from Facing History and one from Remake Learning – both of which weave in social justice topics – or this one from Read Write Think that approaches it with a bilingual perspective.

In case you missed this one in Amy Erin Borovoy’s Edutopia article, the video below shows that spoken word poetry can be written and performed by students at any age level. While younger children may not have the polished presentation style of an Amanda Gorman, they make up for this with their enthusiastic gestures and unusual choices for topics!

I will be adding this post to my Wakelet of poetry resources – all available to you for National Poetry Month in April!

Kenyanshilling, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Creative Thinking, K-12, Language Arts, Writing

Language is a Virus

As we continue our week-long poetry theme, I want to introduce you to Language is a Virus. Though the site includes all types of writing, there are several poetry-related pages you may want to explore. One of them is the Visual Poetry tool. When you launch this, you can draw in the browser with your text. It reminds me of the TypeDrawing app my students used on the iPads long ago, which is sadly not available any longer. There are not as many variables you can change in the Visual Poetry tool, but can choose different colored backgrounds and text. For some reason, the “Save” button did not work for me. However, right-click and “Save As” did the trick; just be aware that your page will clear as soon as you save.

created with Visual Poetry

I learned about “Square Poems” from another interactive tool on the site. (Sorry, I didn’t have the bandwidth to create my own example.) I had no idea that Lewis Carroll was a mathematician as well as an author. Here is more about square poetry.

Along with the text manipulation interactives that you will find on Language is a Virus are some games. Letter Link Poetry looks like a fun challenge, and Electronic Poetry is like a digital version of magnetic poetry. Several of the games allow you to choose from an extensive group of word lists, which makes for endless amounts of creativity.

I will be adding this site to my Wakelet of poetry resources – all available to you for National Poetry Month in April!