POETRY
I was at first struck by Allen's statement that poetry is "a great way to ease into writing." As someone who sometimes struggles to write poetry, I found this statement a bit hard to swallow. But after reflecting on what poetry actually is and continuing to read Allen's chapter, I definitely see her point. If students are intimidated by writing, poetry can be great, if only in the sense that it's often short in length. Students will not be bogged down trying to reach a certain length or have their mechanics just right. It can be appealing to all students because it seems to me that poetry can have as much or little structure as the writer wants. This could be great for students who need structure (you could provide a specific structural outline for a certain type of poem) and students who tend to be more confident with poetry and are comfortable writing their own poems with little prompting or structure. I have come to appreciate the actual act of writing poetry and the value of the creative process it involves after reading this chapter!
INVITATIONS
There is no denying that invitations are a wonderful teaching tool that help students foster their own learning through questions and discussions. I love how interactive invitations are--that they require students to build community through their discussions with one another. If a student is really engaged, it seems impossible that they would leave a discussion without learning something new and relating it to their lives, and isn't this the goal of most of our lessons as teachers? To teach students to think creatively and for themselves? What a wonderful way to engage students in literacy!
The one issue I have with invitations is the time commitment. It seems like a huge undertaking for teachers to create these invitations for students. While I think they are a tremendous learning tool, I would worry about the amount of time teachers would spend preparing them. I would love to do invitations often with my class, but I just don't know if that is realistic for a teacher?
I think the beauty of invitations is that you can use them for cross-content work. They are also part of your whole language arts package with some critical thinking thrown in. I think that once a teacher gets the hang of using invitations it won't be that much harder than scheduling anything else in.
ReplyDeleteMy main worry would be about administrators and parents who want to see results on a daily basis. The invitations take some thinking time, and new ideas don't always get processed that fast. So, I think the pressure against invitations is mostly external. It's hard to know how hard that pressure will be and what form it will take. It's also hard to know how much, as a teacher, you'll have to let go of in order to meet job expectations that aren't established by you.
Poetry definitely requires creativity!
ReplyDeleteI agree that invitationals would be time consuming, but when I thought about it, I hoped that students would get so interested in the topics they choose, that they would choose to work on them in their spare time after we had worked on them together. Maybe that isn't realistic, but I can dream.
ReplyDeleteI agree with what Patti mentioned about most of the pressure being external with invitations. So discouraging, but that seems to be how the system is set up.
ReplyDelete"This could be great for students who need structure (you could provide a specific structural outline for a certain type of poem) and students who tend to be more confident with poetry and are comfortable writing their own poems with little prompting or structure."
ReplyDeleteI liked this statement! As teachers we are always needing to think about how we can make a lesson accessible to everyone and I agree that Poetry, by it's open nature, does just that!