Early in my career, the bulk of the classroom discussions I facilitated mirrored the structure of a wagon wheel ...
I'd be at the hub of everything asking questions ... a handful of students would respond ... I'd ask another question ... the same one or two students would flatter me ... rinse and repeat.
Two things radically changed my success in the classroom:
- Gamifying classroom discussion
- Equipping my students with writing heuristics
In today's video, I run teachers through a process that I call "The Poetic 5th."
What I do is gamify five poems from one author (and in this video, I spotlight the work of Mary Oliver).
In brief, what you'll see in the video is the depth at which my students can ascertain a poem's meaning simply by the manner in which they've been taught to question a text.
Further, you'll also see my students do some really nice writing while pulling the strings of my inverted thesis heuristic (what they use to construct the introductory paragraph) as well as the syllogistic method heuristic (what they use to build the body paragraphs).
In the video's description, you'll find student-generated questions (I helped a little) for the following five poems:
The Swan
Invitation
Don't Hesitate
When Death Comes
The Summer Day
When it comes time to construct the essay, I "Bob Ross" how to do it with Oliver's poem "The Black Snake."
To cut down on the mimicry, students cannot write about the poem I am writing about (they need to choose from the five listed above).
So, you have two things in here: all the questions you'll need to run a Plato's Play-Doh Discussion ... plus the slides you'll need to host a writing workshop that feature my exemplars.
What's cool about The Poetic 5th is that students begin to see patterns.
Not only does this help them out with their writing, but I also find that they become much better with the M.C. portions of their exams.
Winner ... Winner ... Chicken dinner!!\
Reach out if you need anything or have questions
Happy teaching and happy writing!
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