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Poetry in Second Life Level: Intermediate --- Content: Language arts |
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Ms. Hoa’s middle school language arts class is studying a
unit on poetry. Through this unit they are attempting to answer the unit
question, “How do syntax (grammar) and phonetics (sounds) impact meaning and
emotions?” In the past, Ms. Hoa has found that students, especially male students,
are reluctant to share their feelings through poetry for fear of ridicule
from other students. To help her students express themselves without fear,
Ms. Hoa has decided to hold her traditional annual
poetry reading online in the virtual world of Teen Second Life. Each student
will present his or her original poetry through an avatar created in this
virtual world. This unit meets
standards that require students to “draw on their prior experience, their
interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning
and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their
understanding of textual features to comprehend, interpret, evaluate and
appreciate texts.” The unit consists of
these elements: Reading and discussing
poems on identity that appeal to the age group in the native language
(in-class small group activity) Language and word
exploration through poetry sites that allow students to “play” with words and
phrases (rhyming dictionaries, tag clouds, other poetry tools) Developing a rubric to
identify the elements of poems that elicit strong emotions (“What is a good
poem?”) Writing individual
poems for publication and presentation Recording poems with
or without music and visuals as a podcast or video Presenting poems
online in Teen Second Life through an avatar Getting feedback on
poems and presentations real-time via comments in the virtual world and
Twitter feeds To launch the unit,
Ms. Hoa introduces the following statement made by
developmental psychologist Erik Erikson, “The main task of adolescence is to
achieve a state of identity.” Next, she assigns teams of three to four
students to read and discuss a poem or set of song lyrics that illustrates
this search for identity. The team must describe the emotions the poem
elicited from the group, key words or phrases that evoked emotions, and
syntax that differed from conversational, every-day speech. Each team
appoints a secretary to record the important points of the discussion and a
spokesperson to summarize it to the class. Groups share their poems or songs
and their critiques with the whole class. In English, poems
could include selections such as: Song lyrics could
include selections like: Next, remaining with
their teams, students rotate to a different poem or song (switching from poem
to song or vice versa) to explore the poem from a structural point of view.
Teams will explore their poems through a variety of online tools designed to
illuminate poetic elements. For example, teams
will input their poems/songs into a visualization tool that illustrates the
relative importance of words or concepts through a word frequency “tag
cloud,” a visual thesaurus that depicts word associations. The same
poems/songs can then be examined through tools, such as Found Poetry, which
allow students to input the lines of a poem and automatically create original
new poems/songs from those same elements; or insert their own text into a
poem stem (“Hope is…”) to create original phrases and explore literacy
devices, syntax, parts of speech, etc. Other interactive tools allow students
to study the line breaks in a poem and manipulate the words in other poems to
change the lines breaks (Line Breaker) or move and add to “magnetic"
words to create original poems (Magnetic Poetry Board). Other sites allow students
to experiment writing letters as poems drawing attention to why the lines of
the poem/song are broken, where they are broken, and how these line breaks
affect rhythm, sound, meaning, and appearance (Letter Poem Creator). After exploration
through these online tools, the class meets as a whole group to dissect the
elements of a “good” poem. These elements form the outline of the rubric that
the class can use to analyze their own poetic contributions and those of
famous poets. Next, students work on
writing their own poetic expressions dealing with the theme of
“identity.” Students may work with online tools that provide prompts
(Muse Poetry Generator), enable the student to easily move and visualize
words and phrases (Poetry Tiles), or provide assistance with rhymes (rhyming
dictionaries). Students will receive
feedback from their peers and attendees in the virtual world (clapping,
comments, etc.). However, students may request further feedback in real time
via twitter feeds (Twitter feedback tools). Due to the subjective
and personal nature of the content of the unit, poems and participation in
activities in this unit will be graded on a pass/fail basis depending on
class and team participation. However, student contributions will be
evaluated by students themselves using the rubric the class developed, and
students must demonstrate familiarity with the assigned poems and online
tools investigated in the unit by completing a unit test. Resources used in this
scenario: Word relationships: http://www.visualthesaurus.com Tools used in this
scenario: |