Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute: Putting Poetry on it's Feet

Reviewed By: Teresa McMurray

REVIEW

Putting Poetry on it’s Feet is a teaching unit by Maggie Roberts for the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute, which is an educational partnership between Yale University and the New Haven Public Schools. The Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute keeps an index of the teaching units from 1978 – 2002. This teaching unit was written in 1989. The site is divided into eight sections: Narrative, Objectives, Lesson Plan #1, Lesson Plan #2, Lesson Plan #3, Bibliography For Teachers, Additional Reading Suggestions, and Bibliography For Students. The Narrative section informs us that Maggie Roberts taught theater for three years to middle school children before writing this teaching unit. She sees poetry as another way to tell stories. The Objectives section clearly lists the objectives of this unit. Lesson Plan #1 uses Langston Hughes’ “Mother to Son”. Cooperative learning activities dominate the lesson, which itself is broken down into hour increments. Students are asked to find the character’s objectives, explore how they find the objective, where does the scene take place, and what the character might be doing during the scene. Finally, exercises in improvising are used and suggestions as to how to use the poem to “kick off” other units are given. Plans for using this poem with adults are given. Lesson Plan #2 involves using “I’m Nobody!” by Emily Dickinson and poems from a show called “The Me Nobody Knows” to complement each other. Students will write their own short poems about secrets-real or imaginary. After students have switched papers, and read the poems aloud, they take their poems back and write two lines that rhyme. Lesson Plan #2 uses “The Streetcleaner’s Lament” by Patricia Hubbell. In this lesson, Roberts wants “to incorporate movement into the presentation of a poem” and develop the students’ awareness of the theme for the year, The Living Earth. The students stand in a circle and copy movements. Finally, students will think of their own poems and ways to enhance movement. This site lists an extensive Bibliography for Teachers and Bibliography for Students. Poems suggested in the bibliography range in date from 1923-1988. The unit was written in 1989-14 years ago-but good lesson plans are good lesson plans. A teacher can never have enough resources. I could not find a way to contact Maggie Roberts, but there are emails available on the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute site that give contact information. This is a no-frills, yet informative academic site