Black. Out. Poetry.
I have been reading about the literacy skills involved with Black Out Poetry, and after seeing a friend post one of her pieces on social media, I decided we should take the risk and try it. Ultimately, I let the students decide.
The first thing I did was explain it, very briefly.
I then challenged students to complete a graphic organizer while searching the web for information on Black Out Poetry. Students even went so far as to use the hashtag to search, too. #blackoutpoetry
Once students saw the samples I had shown, we watched this video.
We then talked about steps to Black Out Poetry. I had found several websites with several different approaches. In my presentation, I stressed to students that we would find what works for us and that the steps were simply to guide us and they weren't all completely necessary. Our goal was to find our creative process.
We needed a practice round.
For the practice round, I supplied students with the lyrics to two songs. We listened to both songs and students chose what song they wanted to "Black Out."
We had so much fun with this! One of the coolest parts (for me, at least) was hearing and seeing students mess up. Kids were saying, "Crap! I goofed!" Or "Man! I should have made the circle wider" or even "Oh man... wait... ok... ok... I got it... no biggie."
The next round was student choice.
Students were instructed to find song lyrics they would like to Black Out, or simply ANYTHING. Some students chose poetry. Some chose lyrics. Some chose an article from the local newspaper.
They did amazing work! Some students figured out that they liked ILLUSTRATING their poetry before blacking out while others preferred blacking out first.
Hearing the kids talk through their process together was one of those smile file moments.
Once we finished, we discussed some of the processes they were using:
- creative thinking
- connecting literature to art
- brainstorming
- pre-writing
- thinking analytically
- making connections
- creative writing
- understanding figurative language
- etc...
I never expected them to want to go further. I kid you not... I had students BEGGING to "do just one more." I asked them if they would want me to host a Prime Time (study hall type thing we have here) and they said yes... but they also wanted to do one more in class.
We decided we would take random pages from our class novel to Black Out.
The pieces are absolutely gorgeous and I can't wait to share them with you once they are back from lamination.
I am completely blown away by this experience.
Have I ever mentioned how much I love my job!?!?
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