Poetry can be such an internal experience that it is nice to break out of the personal now and then, and make it a social experience. Certainly, poetry slams are one way to do this. Another way is to read and write Poems for Two (or more) Voices, which is an activity I do with my sixth graders. This style of poetry is designed to be read aloud by more than one person, with the voices weaving around each other — sometimes in unison and sometimes, not.
We begin by reading from some collections by Paul Fleischman (Joyful Noise) and Theonis Papas (Math Talk). Fleischman has also created some poems for four voices (called Big Talk) and we do try one of these, but they are tricky as I have to photocopy the pages and he has color-coded the parts. I love both collections but the Math Talk poems are neat because they explore such concepts as Googol (the number, allowing me to talk about the difference between Googol and Google), imaginary numbers, the Mobius Strip and others.
Then, my students work on short Poems for Two Voices. I try to have them consider using opposite ideas (summer and winter, for example) if they get stuck. Or have one voice like something and the other voice not like it. This conflict can give rise to some interesting poems. We then perform them for the class with partners.
We also podcast the poems.
Take a listen to this year’s collection:
- Group One
- Group Two
- Group Three
- Mr. H and Mr. M read a poem (written by Mr. H)
Last year, I also worked on a poem for three voices, and then used Audacity to layer my own voice as a podcast. The poem is about the multiple selves as writer: composer, poet, writer. It was interesting but a bit complicated to pull off.
If you do poems for many voices, what resources do you use?
–Kevin
Stumble it!
This entry was posted on Sunday, May 4th, 2008 at 8:42 pm and is filed under By Kevin (dogtrax), For Lower Grades. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
This sounds like great fun. I’ve been bookmarking a lot of your reflections lately, as I am just about to start poetry with my Grade 8 class. Thanks for sharing!
I hope your poetry unit goes as well as mine did.
We had a lot of fun.
Now, we are publishing some of the poems in the online journal, Space, and also in a self-publication through Lulu. This is the first time with student work via Lulu, so I am taking it slow.
Kevin