Practice What You Teach: Building Classroom Community with Writing

Professional Development Session Presented at ASCD Conference on Teaching Excellence 
Orlando, Florida - June 2019

Learning Objectives:

1. Use strategies and lessons to create a writing community in which all students have voice.
2. Learn how building relationships helps create a culture of care in the writing classroom.
3. Expand your definition of what it means to be a teacher of writing.

We had a great experience presenting this workshop at the Conference on Teaching Excellence this year. Our attendees participated enthusiastically, generated some wonderful poetry and reflection on teaching practice, and the feedback we received was extremely positive. Thanks to everyone who joined us. As promised in our sessions, here is what we did and what the participants created.

Learning Activity:
Upon entering the session, attendees were asked to choose a text from a collection of picture books, song lyrics, informational articles, poetry, pamphlets, book excerpts, and photos. Prior to the start of the session, we presorted these resources into five subtopics within the overarching topic of the Everglades. These subtopics included: alligators, tribal affairs, environmental issues, flora & fauna, and travel & tourism. We also gave each participant a small stack of sticky notes.


Independent: To complete the first step, participants read their text selection independently.

Collaboration: The next step is to have all participants disperse and find a chart paper placed around the room with their subtopic listed. Here they meet up with others who selected texts in the same subtopic.

This is where the magic happens! It is especially exciting to watch groups of people who have never met one another, to interact and collaborate towards a common goal, to write. There were elementary teachers and high school biology teachers, history teachers and ELA teachers from all grades.

If you are interested in Total Participation Techniques, this certainly qualifies. Everyone in the room had the opportunity to read, think, and reflect independently. Then these thoughts were brought together to share with the group. There is sharing, discussion, word-smithing, deliberating, and evidence of thinking and processing of ideas. We heard quite a bit of laughing too, which is always an added bonus. Having fun increases endorphins and lowers stress hormones!

Finally, the group is asked to make some final decisions and get their sticky notes drafted into a complete poem. In a found poem, you generally ask your writers not to add any of their own words.

When everyone has completed their poems on the chart paper, we recommend a gallery walk. In our case, time was limited and the groups were so energized and excited we had each group share their poems aloud. Here are some of them.


Alligator Blues
Alligators slither around in brackish
water, floating, turning, dipping,
full of emptiness
Rumbling sound buoyantly carpets
the swamp, eyeing the snake for lunch
today
Eats his guest, full to the brim, an
unutterable delight, powerfully
Suddenly, alligator holes keep the cycle
of life
Gracious gator peeks from the hold, protective
of young -- peaceful existence.
Jurassic Nights!





Everglades, wetlands, greenworld
Trying to find a little peace
     of mind
     solitude, mysterious
     majestic palms
winged seeds that spiral in the air
The beauty of the River of grass
     zooming down the highway
     stretch your legs,
emerges from standing water,
sounds of frogs croaking &
     alligators bellowing
Taking my own sweet time,
watch the sun go down.
Everglades, wetlands, greenworld


Alligator Nuggets
a huge grassy area
undeveloped
pinelands, hardwood hammocks and cypress
domes
reliance on the everglades
swampy, sunny terrain
wetlands
natural filter
swamp buggies
reliance on the everglades
plenty of time
boardwalk, rare wildlife, alligators
and anhingas
reliance on the everglades




The Warrior Cry
Their hard metal accents
Regal presence,
Well-organized warriors.
The white man came again
At the point of the bayonet
The sharp sawgrass cut
the skin.
The blood ran red.
Against blunt sentiments
I'm calling you like a long
lost friend.
To the harsh, unforgiving sounds
of slot machines.

Lack of artifacts, shallow, damaging
most people never saw
Indians. unique identity
experienced first hand
Chickees dispel the popular perception
vast prairies, rivers of grass
intricate sun-dabbled cypress swamp
Proliferate black & white photographs
with a soul, more valuable than gold
Zooming towards a measure of serenity
healing the leading protagonist
of the ecosystem

Of course we ended the session with a reflective discussion about how this strategy can build community in your classroom, and how you can use this strategy as we did or in another application in any kind of classroom. We heard several ideas, including professional development with teachers and unpacking a complex science text. Really, the possibilities are endless.

If you attended the conference and try this strategy in your learning environment, or if you have read here and given it a try, please let us know! Comment below, or email any one of us and share.

Thanks again to all of the wonderful teachers who joined us at ASCD-CTE 2019.


Write. Practice. Teach.
Annmarie, Helen, Laurie, and Natalie



The rest of the group poems:

Glades
All things large and small that makes
the earth beautiful
The plants and animals of the
Everglades are an unusual blend
Diverse, roots are tall, peaceful.
Where rivers flow, making all the
rules -- this river is like no other
river on earth
Reflection, habitat, mature, shadows
and silent skies.
The Everglades are a living
kaleidoscope of color and beauty.

***

Everglades
In the land of the Seminole
Watch the sun go down and let
the world go round
I'm taking my own sweet time
gettin' high, watchin' eagles fly
Alligators prowl
I'll drift around
Making gator sounds
Just trying to find
a little peace of mind
Days of old
Calling like a lost friend

***

Everglades National Park, Protected Area 1934
Hardwood hammocks are small islands
covered with trees.
green and strong
a meeting point
open heart
moon
Lake Okeechobee water supply
obstacles. Damage due to human activity
the next hurricane smash crack
wrench me, open-heart surgery
End of 1960's conservation
uphill toward money
Mangrove swamps grow where rivers flow into the ocean
sprawling concentration of tract homes, strip malls,
CVS and KFC. under water.
1972 Congress passed a bill limiting future
developments. Knock me down.
Cypress trees are right at home in cypress swamps.
I'll come back again.
the unanswered question...

***

Everglades
Famous, Serene, Sugar Sand
Melodic, Ecosystem
where a Great Egret is
among the flora.
Shadows hide tiny, sharp teeth
Strangles host, twists around
hunting and decaying throughout
Needs met through interdependence
and clouds bursting and sunlight
Produce double rainbows
What an experience!

***

swampy harmony
snoring rasp  bug-eyed frog
silent sky  flamingo flying
sawgrass stand endangered lowland
snake stew and gumbo limbo
strangler fig  wild orchid blooming
systematic tranquility

***

The popular perception is that the
Everglades is a monotonous landscape, but
that it is not!
It's an ecosystem filled with wildlife,
vegetation, marsh land, and dangerous animals
like alligators, mosquitoes, and snakes.
Find a trail and explore; boating, cycling,
canoeing, and slogging!
While you're bird-watching the once hunted
animals, don't forget to see the grove of
mahogany trees.
Visit the smallest Post Office in the U.S.,
Native American tribes, and hear tales of
murder and Everglades mysteries from the
Park Rangers.

***

Sacred Earth. Tribes undisturbed, attacked, captured, enslaved.
This was unheard. The hues of slaughter on the horizon.
In defeat and despair, the once powerful had to retreat.
The fertile and secure everglades had its heart detroyed.
Determined and young with soulful eyes. Families proud.
Communities fell, and a home for the young, and old.
Generations of survivors filled with hatred and distrust
wondering what the future holds.
Windows to the past and eyes on the present.

***

Daughter of the Everglades
I heard the Ghost
easy muscled
graceful, assured people
bronze and dark in the glades
Communal edifices
Wealth untold
Generations of people still live
I know who you are...

***

The Alligator
Large, ferocious, motionless,
impressively cold and
cruel eyes, complicated
and full of peril, protective
moves with harmonic grace and wisdom
sometimes swift, and inspires fear
lives in swamp lands, brackish waters,
hidden within a continuous sheet of
water
Lend a rifle and go hunting,
the Keystone Species, the alligator.

***

Here's Allie
Towering royal palms
bed deadly cottonmouth
toothy grin seems benign
hunger look with his
scaly skin
cold-blooded
DANGER DANGER sounds
the water!



References from Slide Presentation:

  

Bloome, D. (1986) Building literacy and the classroom community, Theory Into Practice, 25:2, 71-76.

Daiute, C., & Dalton, B. (1993). Collaboration between Children Learning to Write: Can Novices Be Masters?   

     Cognition and Instruction,10(4), 281-333. 

Hicks, J & Johnson, J. (2000) Staging learning: The play’s the thing, The Quarterly, (22)3, 25-31.

McDonough, J & Ackerman, K. (2017) Relationship-building for effective writing instruction. International Literacy 

     Association: Literacy Daily.  

Roberson, G & Wilkie, R. (2010) “Sense of place,” Encyclopedia of Geography, B Warf, ed. London and 

     Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, p2532-4.

Sparks, S.D. (2017) Classroom collaboration: Seeking the secret to success. Education Week, (36)31, 8.

We Are Writers

One of the things I miss the most in my current role as a content area specialist for the district is not having students of my own. I do have plenty of opportunities to work with other teachers' students, but nothing beats the connections made in the day-to-day of the classroom.

By my 3rd year of teaching, I added Exceptional Student Education to my certificate, something many of my peers warned me not to do because I would be forever "stuck" in that role. What they didn't know was that experience would shape me into the educator I am today.

At the time, the 10th graders were required to take the FCAT Writing Exam, not high stakes for them as it was not tied to graduation, but high stakes for the teachers and the schools. Consequently, there wasn't a shortage of pressure applied to English II teachers across the district.

I knew I needed to start early for this February test, so about 3 weeks into school, I introduced my students--all with some type of written language disability--to the expectations for the exam, a non-text dependent prompt. Here is an example of one courtesy of the Florida Department of Education:

Writing to Explain (Expository)
Writing Situation: To honor the accomplishments of the first president of the United States, George Washington, his picture has been printed on the dollar bill since 1869.

Directions for Writing: Think about another person whose actions in life show that he or she deserves such a honor. Now write to explain why this person is worthy of having his or her picture printed on the dollar bill (http://www.fldoe.org).

About 2 minutes into my spiel, mostly intended to get the students pumped up about the task, Evan interrupted me. "What if your whole life, people told you you're stupid, that you can't write?"

My heart broke in that instant, but I kept my composure. "Who said you had to believe them?"

Now, I am certain  no one ever uttered the words you are stupid to Evan, but that is the message he received when he took this same test in 4th and 8th grades. His learning disability made it a struggle for him to spell words correctly. He had a rich vocabulary, thought critically, and spoke beautifully, but he spelled everything phonetically, for example using -shun instead of -tion or -sion. 

I decided to do something unplanned. After posting the prompt and setting the timer for 45 minutes--the amount of time they were allotted on the real test--I sat amongst my students and wrote my own response to the prompt, making some mistakes on purpose. But, I didn't have to try hard to not make the essay my best writing. I do much better writing about text or research writing than random prompts I have no interest in or experience with, especially when I get very little time to ponder the topic and come up with ideas.

The next day, I announced that we were going to analyze someone's essay as a whole class. Groans filled the room. Then, I put my paper under the overhead projector. I saw a couple of kids look at each other quizzically.

As we looked at my essay sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, the students politely pointed out my grammar errors and even made some suggestions on how I could word things differently and combine simple sentences into complex and compound sentences.

Showing that vulnerability and willingness to put my own work under the microscope was one of the best things I have ever done. Students who had refused to write the day before decided to write as the others shared their work with peers to get suggestions for revisions. I didn't add anything unless they asked.

We repeated this throughout the first semester, but students began coming to the overhead with their papers, a huge leap for most.

When results came back--yes, we actually received the results before the school year ended--Evan balled up his test report and angrily threw it across the room. I asked what was wrong. He had scored a 3, perfectly acceptable the year before, but this year, a 3.5 was considered "passing."

"See, I told you I was stupid!"

"Well, I was the one who was supposed to teach you this stuff, and I failed you, so maybe I'm the one who's stupid," I replied.  I concentrated so much on the craft of writing (silly me), that I didn't give enough time to the basics of grammar and conventions.

Objections to that statement filled the room. I let the conversations continue because I believed that was more important than the lesson I had planned. The consensus was that, no, I wasn't stupid. I was a great writer, and I helped them become better writers.

They believed they had become better writers. And, I believed it too.

We made a pact that day. They would not define themselves based on a one-day draft writing test, but on their improvements as writers. After all, no first draft is ever perfect. I would venture to say the phrase "final draft" is an oxymoron.

This is the message I hope those kids still carry to this day: We are writers when we put ourselves out there. We are writers when we know our work is never "done."

Student-Designed Writing Prompts

By Natalie Elschlager

Sometime in March this school year, the Creative Writing kiddos were comfortable enough to stretch their abilities even further. Out of the blue one day, several students began to express an interest in developing their own writing prompts/activities for the class. I had to let go of the reins. Honestly, it was easy to do. Their confidence in their writing was palpable. We decided to start with developing student-designed prompts.

The Lesson

Each student generated 2-5 of their own writing prompts-- any style, any format, and length, etc. Then, the class was divided into small groups where they shared their prompt ideas. It took about 15-20 minutes to provide and receive feedback from peers. From there, students returned to their seats. Based upon what they learned from their classmates and their personal judgement, they narrowed their focus on one prompt from their list.

Meanwhile, I had already posted a blank Google Doc to our Google Classroom. When they felt totally ready, each student typed their prompt in the document. In order to avoid a feeling of being overwhelmed by too many options yet maintain a certain amount of flexibility, we voted on 5 prompts to tackle straight away-- just 5 from our master list. Here are our top five:

1. Write a poem about your feelings towards a close family member. Make sure there are at least two stanzas.
2. Write a poem about someone in the class--it doesn’t matter who--but don’t say their name.
3. Six word horror story (write 3-5 of these).
4. Design a shaped poem specific to the subject of your poem.
5. Everyone has their expiration date on their arm when they’re born. You’re past your due date. Write a short story.

(Author’s note: I really love the variety here! Look at #2...big time relationship builder.)

As for the remaining prompts, we were able to revisit them in a variety of ways: bell ringers/warm-ups, journaling, and for those moments when we had additional time to fill in the period. With this, each student felt the value in their contribution.

Big Take-Ways

• Equal contribution from all students
• Community Building: collaboration; discussion, peer-editing
• Each student is recognized for their idea
• Flexibility and choice for the writer
• Assortment of writing prompts
• Promotes creativity!

Final Word

If you can sense your students are ready for this challenge, essentially designing their own writing lesson (wow!), I say go for it...let loose. What I found most interesting and rewarding is how this simple “flipping the switch” recharged my writers at a time of the year where I think we all needed a little reboot, helping enhance our resilience and stamina in our writing journey together.

River of Grass: College Sudents' Found Poetry

Shared by Laurie J. Kemp

For almost 10 years now I have been teaching a required course at the local university. The university vision, mission, and guiding principles incorporate coursework about sustainability to "prepare students, faculty, and staff to be engaged citizens and leaders of the green economy." No matter what major a student selects, every undergraduate must complete a couple of required courses in civic engagement and sustainability. I teach the course on sustainability, which also incorporates local ecology and sense of place.

Needless to say, I have my share of students who are less than thrilled about the mandatory coursework they sometimes feel does not apply to their major, and worse, is of no interest to them. Sadly, some of them cannot be swayed. However, by the end of the course many of them begin to understand that all people in all majors can benefit from understanding concepts around sustainability and the value of their local environment and the natural world.

In any event, with all of the heavy reading in the course (there is lots of it), most textbook and informational reading, something different happens when my students encounter an excerpt from Marjory Stoneman Douglas' The Everglades: River of Grass. Because Douglas was a journalist and a writer, her work reads a lot differently than the other readings. There is a richness in the sensory descriptions and many of my students from the math, science and engineering majors struggle with the literary tone and structure. I am pretty sure most of them quit reading before they ever got halfway through.

A couple of years ago, I decided a good way to engage students from the various colleges and to add a language and humanities component previously lacking in the course, would be to focus on the literary contribution of the work and the homage to the Florida Everglades. Thus, my lessons on found poetry were born! I have done this individually and collaboratively, and because of the nature of the course I teach, we focus on sense of place. I will include commentary and variations along with the steps and the work of some of my students.


A College Found Poetry Lesson with The Everglades: River of Grass by Marjory Stoneman Douglas:

Step 1: 
The course text collection includes the first chapter of the book called "The Nature of the Everglades." The chapter has sections focused on The Grass; The Water; The Rock, and The River, as well as two sections called The River of Time, and Life on the Rock. Each of these is chock full of rich detailed and dynamic descriptions of the flora and fauna so unique to The Everglades.

The first time I tried this assignment I asked students to read with no particular section in mind. In subsequent lessons, I have tried assigning sections or asking everyone to read all of it, and asking afterward for students to select one section that resonated strongly with them. Best part about these lessons is that there really are no rules! The key to how you assign the text is how you plan to engage the students in the writing activity that follows. My students read it before coming to class.

Step 2: 
This step can happen in tandem with Step 1, or if you are focused on multiple reads and close reading in your class, can stand alone as an actual next step to Step 1. Again, I have done it both ways. Either way, the task is to identify (by annotating, underlining, highlighting) while they are reading, or by going back and jotting on sticky notes or notecards, words, phrases, or pieces of description or information that resonate with them.

Depending on your purpose, you can ask for descriptive language, important information, sounds or verbs, etc. My courses is less about knowledge transmission or acquisition, and more about exposure to new ideas and experiences, so I leave the door wide open for quite literally, anything that resonates with them or strikes them as noteworthy. You can provide a target number of items if you wish, but I prefer not to.

*I find the sticky note or notecard method works best because students are able to move their text around for the next step. Even better is to have them annotate while they read, and then re-read and jot on the notecards or sticky notes. You can even have them write their text on paper and cut them into strips. Do whatever works in the time and space you have.

*I have done this two different ways. Sometimes I tell the students up front what they will be doing and why they are writing down the words and phrases. Other times, I leave them wondering. Sometimes not knowing what the purpose is at the start keeps them from editing and censoring themselves as they collect from the reading.

Step 3:
Here is when you have the option of using an individual or collaborative writing exercise. You can ask students to do this on their own (this was necessary as an online activity in several of my college courses) or as a collaborative group, which is my favorite implementation. I have done it both ways, but the collaborative aspect of group writing helps build classroom community, and it's fun!

Students bring their notecards or sticky notes to a group. They lay them all out on a table or desks in front of them, and work together to arrange their text into a shared poem. I often have to remind them they don't have to use every one of each individual's notecards, and inevitably someone asks if they can add any of their own words. I have never allowed that, but again you choose the rules! I do allow them to pluralize or singularize words and change tense and pronouns as needed. The poem can be in any form the students choose.

*I had some photos of my students working through this process, but can't seem to dig them up. It's quite the sight, especially when your groups get really into it, and many of them do!

Step 4:
Groups or individuals revise their poems and share them. If we completed them in class, I require the groups to read them aloud and I always require them to post them in Canvas (the online LMS used by our university). In the end, it is so interesting to see what they hyper focused on or what aspects of the text resonate with them. I also require students to reflect on the process and how it contributed to their comprehension and perception of the author and the text. It's really interesting to see how different students process the same text.

Here is some of their work:

Fiery Glade

Wetness that is sweet among salt
tiny hidden blossoms, luminous in the darkness,
give way to mile high pillars of orange light, roily tangerine
spears thrust into the burning brass

rolling clouds of heavy cream against a hyacinth sky
thin screaming hordes bend in the west wind
they bow, they burn
the fierce fire, lord, power and first cause over the Everglades

***

The Evercycle

Half way down that thrusting sea-bound peninsula.
Grass and water together make the river.
Its stringy and grainy dullness glitters with the myriad unrotted silica points, like glass dust.
To try and make ones way among these impenetrable tufts is to be cut off from air.
Clouds fill with their steely haze and leave only outline of the visible world.
Water falls solid, in sheets, in cascades.
The sawgrass and all those acres of green growing things draw up the water within their cells, use it, and breathe it out again.

***

"like the birds, he is everywhere"

the great pointed paw
of which it marks the end,
the question was at once,
where do you begin?

subtlety and diversity,
a crowd of changing forms,
of thrusting teeming life;

vast glittering openness—
the bright where the color
of the water and the color
of the sky become one,
spreading and flowing
on its true course southward.

at the horizon, they
become velvet—
taller and denser in
the dark soil of
its own death,
superb monotony.

the glitter of rising water
will be everywhere,
the foundation stuff
of the world—
time, the vastest river,
carries us and all life forward.
here, the rain is everything.

***

At the End of the World

Where the grass and the water are there
And the dew falls,
Where one sinks in mud and water
And neighborhoods form,
These impenetrable tufts
Beaten down by the sun,
Hold no weight.

Forces of the season
Balanced, like scales
Are green with thick-stemmed waterweeds,
White marly water
And glowing yellow.
Here at the end of the world.

***

The Everglades

There are no other Everglades in the world.
The Everglades, El Laguno del Espiritu Santo.
Beginning at lake Okeechobee,
Crisp lake waves.
The winds shatter the reflections.
The mystery of the Everglades,
is enduring, so hostile, so simple.
Land breezes and sea breezes
Coming from the west.
In the luminous unseen dark,
Yet moon flowers opened acres
Of flat white blossoms, cloud white,
Foam white, and still.

***

Following upward and downward
The Everglades curve grandly in the limestone
All this end of the peninsula is a country that the sea has conquered and has never left
The blue of the sky is caught down there among the grass stems
Flashing back their red and emerald and diamond lights to the revealed glory of the sun in splendor
Here the rain falls more powerfully and logically than anywhere else upon the temperate mainland of the United States
They are a world in themselves

Mad Lib Warm-Ups

Mad Lib Warm-Ups

by Helen Sadler

I teach a creative writing course which has all three levels in middle school together in one class.  This past semester a 6th grade boy started a mad lib activity at the beginning of class that became a regular feature.

We always begin each writing class with a ten minute freewrite: lights off and a few prompts up on the screen. After a couple weeks of the usual freewriting, a boy began to create a story leaving out specific parts.  He would then sit on the author's stool in the front of the room and ask the other writers to provide the details, calling on them as they raised their hands. What is cool about this is that he had to tell them if he needed a noun, adjective, or verb: it reinforced these parts of speech without any work on my part! He also would have to identify if the noun had to be a person, place, or thing. At first this started out slowly, with only a few participating, but eventually everyone got more involved and wanted to offer ideas.

Mad Lib Shell by Isabela

After the story was all filled in, a reading of it would take place, to smiles and giggles.  We might talk about correct usage of things like verbs, but in general this was just considered a warm-up and a way to build community by collaborating on the end product.

Mad Lib filled in by student suggestions

Eventually other students began to write their own mad lib shells, and taking turns calling on others to fill in their stories. After several weeks of this, a 7th grade girl used song lyrics, leaving out specific words in order to "rewrite" the song and change its meaning.  This caught on and was used by writers as more and more got involved.

Leaving room for student innovation is the key to building a writing community.  This second period class taught me a lot about being open to whatever works best for the group as a whole, and allowing them to bend and shape it as they saw fit.

Song lyrics used for Mad Lib, Twenty-One Pilots being a favorite

Scribble Stories

Scribble Stories

by Helen Sadler

Here is a fun, collaborative, and easy activity to build community in the classroom. I tend to use this when I have some time to fill before a holiday or during testing times when the schedules get messed up.

The scribble story begins by creating groups of about 4-5 people.  Each person in the group has one plain piece of copy paper, as well as a marker. Each group member's marker color should be different.

First, the group decides how they will send the paper around the circle they've created.

Next, each group member draws one line/squiggle/shape on the paper.  ONE.

They pass on to the next person, who adds on. As the papers go around, a unique image should begin to appear on each paper, based on the contributions of each member.

As the images start to emerge, the group then begins to figure out what kind of story they can tell from the images, as well as deciding what else they may need to add to each drawing to make it more complete.

As writers get to this point, I bring them a large piece of chart paper and glue.  They glue down the pictures in the order they go, and write their story in marker in large lettering next to it.  I tell them to be sure to attend to the basics of story -- some kind of conflict is being resolved.  I also encourage dialogue so the characters have some life to them. These are very short stories, so a little can go a long way.

I didn't have large enough chart paper, so they worked on two and taped together

This activity produces lots of laughter as the kids try to make their stories cohesive.  The next step, of course, is to present.

The Scribble Story has been a good standby for me for many years, but I know it has greater possibilities than I have allowed. There are two ways I see using this more effectively in the future: first -- do it at the beginning of school to build community quickly.  Second -- do it again later in the year after we've studied things like character, plot, setting, and require them to be more deliberate in adding these elements.

Either way, this is always a winner, and makes a good wall display.

Happy writing!

Content Area Specific Found Poetry

By Natalie Elschlager

Found Poetry is one of my favorite, go-to formats whenever the occasion strikes me. Like the time our school had a pep rally and the normal schedule was totally thrown off-- found poetry to the rescue! That afternoon, we printed two sets of lyrics from our favorite songs and created original pieces.

Also, FP is extremely flexible. It can be done independently, with partners, in teams, etc. in any content area. In the past, I have had my students create found poetry from famous speeches, such as King's "I Have a Dream". We have designed found poems from pages in novels or scenes from plays. It's an excellent distributive summarizing tool, as well.

In this lesson, I wanted to challenge my Creative Writing students while also promoting 'writing to learn' in ALL content areas. The idea being students can further study/review a content-specific concept all while honing and increasing their writing practice. It can be done! We even managed to write a poem about Trig....TRIG! Yes, MATH! Insanity, right?;-) The lesson is detailed in the video below. Feel free to steal, tweek, and implement found poetry into your lessons ASAP. 

Writing Skills	Academics Skills	Social Skills
form; structure; design	annotating;  marking the text	collaboration
language; word choice	pulling; citing text	peer review; feedback
poetic techniques	composition	publication