It's been awhile, my friends! This week my honors classes finished their dystopian independent novel study that they started three weeks ago. I thought I'd reward them by doing something a little more creative and fun (but still academic! shhhh!). I decided to do found poems with them! I love this activity because the kids have so much fun with it, but I also love it because I can use it as a formative assessment! Now, for those of you who don't know, found poetry is a type of poetry where a passage is taken from a larger piece of text and reframed into poetry. The original text is reframed by adding, deleting, or covering text. If you can't picture it, don't worry! I have plenty of student examples below!
Because my school recently went 1:1 with Chromebooks this year, I had my students pull out their dystopian novels at the beginning of class and choose what they thought to be the most pivotal 2-3 pages. This alone can take them a good 10 to 15 minutes. Deciding is so difficult! After they choose, I have them type up their pages in a Google Doc and then resize it to take up most of the page. I make sure I limit it to one page though, because the artwork piece doesn't really work if there are multiple pages involved. Next, they print! I make sure they each print two copies (rough draft and final draft). On the first copy I have them go through and circle words and phrases that are absolutely necessities to the overall meaning and movement of the scene. This ends up being their poem! I have them use the same copy to sketch out a rough draft for their design or picture that will go over or around their selected words and phrases. They must show me a rough draft before they move on to a final draft.
I love this activity! When I grade it, I can quickly and easily tell if students understood the main points of their chosen passage. Sometimes I use this activity as an introduction to or refresher on summary writing. It's a great way for your more visual learners to see how a summary comes together!
Check out these awesome student samples!
If you're interested in doing this in your own classroom, I have my found poem template for sale on my TpT store here! Check it out!
-Taliena (Koch's Odds 'N Ends)
