This month, we focus on the 4 C's: Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, and Critical Thinking. Today's entry comes from Bjorn Paige, principal at Diegueño Middle School:
T.S. Eliot
“April is the cruelest month.”
A poem of 4 C’s
T.S. Eliot said that “April is the cruelest month.” He wasn't a teacher or he would have known that’s untrue; we get spring break. What April really is, at least at Diegueño, is National Poetry Month. I’m using the celebration as an excuse to step in front of a few classes to teach a lesson on poetry.
As I prepare, I’m keeping in mind the “4 C’s” that my teachers bring to their classrooms every day: Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, and Critical Thinking. I've got about an hour scheduled for my dance with Emily Dickinson and friends, and I’m committed to doing my best to make it count.
The plan, still in its infancy, as it relates to the 4 C’s, looks a little like this…
Critical Thinking: After a bit of talk about verse as opposed to prose, I’ll give the kids one of two poems about hope: Emily Dickinson’s famous “thing with feathers” and Emily Brontë’s “timid friend.” Diametrically opposed, the poems will invite students to read closely, annotate, and come up with some ideas about the work.
Communication: After each student has had a chance to spend some time with her poem, I’ll pair the students so each group has both a Dickinson and a Brontë poem, and invite the students to share their poem and their thoughts on form, language, and message.
Collaboration: After each student has had a chance to speak, I’ll blend the groups into quartets, and ask students to work together to develop a unified perspective on these poets’ views. This part of my lesson still has some work to go, but I know I want to have some specific questions to ask the kids, and I know I want to invite them to come up with meaningful questions as well. Depending on time, we may get a bit of biography on Brontë and Dickinson, and I’m hoping that the students will be able to bring the level of rigorous conversation I've seen them show their own English teachers throughout this year.
Creativity: I thought a bit about this as I was doing my initial draft of the lesson, and knew that I wanted the kids to have an opportunity to put pen to paper and come up with a poem of their own. After our discussion of language, form, and poetic constraints, I think I want to end by having them write a haiku. “They’re simple,” I’ll explain. “As long as you know the rules, and bend your creativity to fit within the parameters. Heck, they can even sneak up on you, like the haiku that is the title of this post.”
Bjorn Paige blogs regularly at bjornpaige.wordpress.com
