Section IV: Lesson #1: Latino Poetry Blog

Name: Kevin Webster

Title of Lesson: Latino Poetry Blog: Blogging as a Forum for Open Discussion

Link to Lesson: http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=1160

Summary of Lesson from Website:

In this lesson, which is most appropriate for eighth and ninth grades, students use critical thinking skills to analyze Latino poetry. Students then refine their writing skills as they respond meaningfully to their peers’ poetry analyses on a class blog. The act of blogging encourages students to think carefully about their responses and to use good writing techniques. Students have the option of making the blog public, thus encouraging good Internet etiquette and further analysis with people outside of school.

1. What content would you be teaching with the lesson?

This lesson consolidates multiple topics: Using technology, such as an online blog, as a communication and writing tool, learning how to analyze poetry, and learning how research affects interpretation. In my methods class I am creating a unit on Latino American Literature, and in this class (RE 4620) my focus is on writing. Here, students would be writing in a unique way, on a blog, and critiquing and analyzing literature using that method.

2. What group of students would you be teaching–grade level, content area?

This lesson would apply to ninth grade English I students. I think it would work well with a majority Hispanic demographic but it could also work well with a Caucasian demographic as well. Students would be introduced to poetry, its forms, and its analysis which focuses on the genre concetration of ninth grade English.

3. What do you like about the lesson?

What I like about this lesson, and every other lesson on Read, Write, Think, is the amount of resources provided. There are links to reading lists, worksheets that organize the students effort (from creating the blog to checklists that facilitate research). The lesson does not have the teacher transmit information but allows the student to construct their own meaning from poetry and also allows them to publish the work in a unique way. Blogs are hands on, they are a quick and easy way for teachers to assess student work, and they are an engaging strategy to make meaning out of a subject.

4. What would you modify in the lesson?

If doing this, I think I would add a creative aspect to the writing section. If students wanted to write their own poetry in response to the literature, students could post this onto their blog. “I poems” would work well here if they were to create one in the perspective the author that they are required to research. I truly believe one way to teach poetry is to write poetry.

Although blogs are a great way to consolidate, publish, and show data and collected writing, it is a fabulous method to display art, pictures, and video. I would possibly want to add more multimedia to this lesson since it is a focus of the possibilities of the internet.