Whitman's Words

Sometimes writing is hard.

This is true for many students.  Some, having specific learning disabilities, struggle with grade level tasks of reading and writing.  Compounding the situation, many students are also acquiring English at school.

Writing is hard.  Writing poetry is even harder.

There are many different options for poetry writing assignments, but one of my favorites is a cut-up poem.  It takes some preparation time, but I find it's worth it.

In a cut- up poem, students will receive an envelop filled with individual words cut from a copy of a famous poem.  In my class, I used four different poems by Walt Whitman from his work Song of Myself, but you could use any poem.  The preparation is to cut out each word and place them into an envelop.  I label the envelop with the name of each poem to keep them straight.

My preference is to have the students work in pairs.  This seems to work well for this assignment.  It allows an opportunity to collaborate, which encourages creativity.  At the same time, it's not too large a group that students are left out of the process.

Students will sort the words various ways. Some will line up the words in rows and columns.  Others may have them spread out on their desk.  I allow them freedom to organize their words and begin creating their poem their own way.

The few directions I give the students are to look for words that stand out to them and then build their poem from there.  They do not have to use all the words.  They cannot add words that aren't in their envelope.  The only caveat to this is that they can cut endings off of words and add them to other words if that help make sense.  They can do this for prefixes and suffixes also. This forces the students to think about word choices and the craft of writing. During this process, I rotate from pair to pair, assisting with questions about words and meaning and giving feedback on craft and choices.  Once they are completed, the students glue their poem onto a piece of construction paper and, if they choose, create a border or illustration to go with it. Interestingly, in all the years I've done this activity, this is the first year that the students chose to not add any illustrations and only a couple pairs decided to use the construction paper to create borders.

As I read these poems, I am reminded that there is a poet within each of us. Challenges only limit us if we let them.  If we are given the tools, in this case- powerful words, we can do anything.