Unseen Perspectives
| Name: |
Nicole Washington |
| School: |
Stephen Decatur M.S. 35 |
| Address: |
272 MacDonough Street |
| City: |
Brooklyn, NY, 11233 |
| Original Project: |
Unseen Perspectives |
| Author: |
Meryl Meisler |
| URL: |
http://teachersnetwork.org/teachnetnyc/mmeisler/bleeding_edge.htm |
How did you modify this unit for use in your own classroom?: In our English language arts class, we modified this unit by adpating the main idea of "Perspectives" in our poetry unit. Student composed original narrative poems based on how they see themselves and their surroundings form different perspectives. Students also had the option of creating collages to artisically espress themselves based on the content of their poems.
List your primary instructional objectives for your students.
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Students will find the correlation between their personal lives, in and out of school, and their outlook on their environment. |
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Students will combine English language arts with digitial technology and art. |
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Students will listen, speak, read and write for critical analysis and evaluation. |
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As speakers and writers, students will use oral and written language that follows the accepted coventions of English language to present, from a variety of perspectives, their opinions and judgements on experiences, ideas, information, and issues. |
What role did technology play in this curriculum unit?: Students discuss the word perspective and then used the Internet to locate the definition. Students used the Internet to view poems by their favorite poets and discussed the perspective from which the poem was written. Students composed their poems on their laptops, revised, edited and completed final drafts. Web sites used included: http://famouspoetsandpoems.com and http://poets.org.
How did you assess and evaluate student performance?: Students work was assesed based on a rubric on a scale of 1 to 4 designed for the lesson. Students collages were rated on a scale 1 to 4 based on creativity and the alignment with the perspective poem. Rubric criteria for poems include: 1. Ability to captivate the reader 2. Sensory Images 3. Use of language 4. Puntuation. Rubric criteria for collage includes: 1. Attention to Theme 2. Creativity 3. Quality of Construction 4. Understanding of Media.
Please tell us briefly about your background & teaching experience: Nicole Washington has been teaching for three years and is currently an English Language Arts teacher. She has a B.A. in Sociology from Suny Binghamton and an M.S. in Middle School Education form Mercy College.
What are your recommendations for other teachers interested in adapting this unit?: This unit can be differentiated to adapt to any student level. Various forms of poetry, such as Haiku or Free Verse, can be used in this unit. The collages could be made into shape poems or geometric figures.
Samples of Student Projects
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Student A wrote a poem based on her perspective of teenage miscommunication which is entitled, |
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