Mallory Goetz

Artifact #4: Poetry Collaborative Unit

Description of Project

The Poetry Collaborative Unit was a project which combined the efforts of both a teacher librarian and a language arts classroom teacher. The project was a 7^th grade poetry unit combining technology (blogging), art, language, and performance all in one.  I planned this project for my 7^th grade language arts classes, which included a field trip to the art museum for poetry inspiration.  I also set up a class blog, using the service KidBlog, where students were asked to “publish” their best work—this used technology as a medium for students to authentically have an audience—their peers.  Students were asked to comment and interact with each others’ poetry, however, in order to protect students all comments were read by myself before they were actually posted on the blog to another student (this is a feature of KidBlog).  The project culminated in students performing a poem of their choice at the “Poetry Café.”  In order to achieve all of this in a collaborative way, the librarian and I shared responsibilities and ideas—sometimes with me being the teacher role and sometimes with me being the librarian role for practice.

Professional Reflection

When I look back on the year I taught this unit, I can honestly say, hands down, that this was my favorite unit of the year.  My students, who started out by groaning when I said we were moving on to poetry, learned to love poetry.  They learned what it meant to really write for a purpose and to perform for an audience.  Technology made it possible for them to have this experience in a way that was actually authentic to them.  Blogging their poems and sharing those poetry blogs with their peers made them more thoughtful about what they wrote, and more excited to share their experiences.  This project made me realize how truly valuable it is to have kids believe that what they are doing is real to the world they live in.  Student engagement was so different, so heightened when it meant something to them beyond a grade and beyond a requirement.

This project also gave me great insight into collaboration in the classroom.  Previous to this unit I had only collaborated with other professionals in the planning stages of lessons—not actually ever co-teaching or working together with the same students through a whole project.  This collaboration with the librarian made it so we could accomplish a lot more than only one teacher would have.  Working with the librarian gave a different perspective versus what only I would have brought to the table.  Students were exposed to poetry that I would not have known to show them, given tips about copyright and reuse, and generally supported by another adult.  Those are things that you cannot provide unless you work together with someone.  This project, ultimately, has been one that gave me a lot of inspiration to collaborate with teachers now I am officially the librarian and not just practicing to be one!  I am able to inspire and cajole teachers into collaboration because I can cite good experiences and the virtues of collaborative lessons from a teacher perspective, as well as, from a teacher librarian’s.

Demonstrated Competencies

1: Reflective Practice

This project promotes collaboration between the teacher librarian and the classroom teacher—in this case a language arts teacher.  After teaching this unit, the librarian and I sat down and looked at what worked well and what needed revision—we knew that in order to make a useful unit for the coming year, we would need to reflect upon that year’s practice.

3: Design and Development

My use of blogging technology, various mode of poetry, and various stimuli for poem inspiration helped each type of student in their ability to be successful on this project.  The project was differentiated by giving students lots of choice and support—letting them choose from a long list of poems to be included in their final project, letting them perform a poem at their own level, giving them starters and examples in order to facilitate poem writing.

4: Evaluation and Assessment

This project was evaluated by using three different types of student assessment. 1. Students were asked to put together a summative ‘portfolio’ of sorts of their best poems on the blog.  This was assessed by myself, by themselves, and by their peers. 2. Students were asked to perform a poem—a summative assessment that was, again, assessed by myself, themselves, and their peers. 3. Students were given formative assessments along the way in order to act as checkpoints for their learning.