Denise Maltese teaches English Language Arts at Onteora Middle School in Boiceville, New York. She is also a mentor teacher for the Bard MAT Program and a fellow of the National Writing Project–both the South Coast Writing Project in Santa Barbara and the Hudson Valley Writing Project in New Paltz, NY. Denise believes that the best way to help her students overcome their anxieties about studying poetry is to have them read and interact with a wide range of poems. During National Poetry Month, her students chose a line of poetry and represented it visually in an ephemeral medium. The goal is to interpret the line by both the choice of medium and the way the line is visualized. Some fine examples are in the gallery below.
from “Mongrel Heart” by David Baker
from “My World Within” by Erin Hanson
from “Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy
from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock” by T.S. Eliot
from “Offering and Rebuff” by Carl Sandburg
from “Death Dragoness” by Jess C. Scott
from “Mountain Stream” by Karl Stuart Kline
from “Darling Coffee” by Meena Alexander
That’s really cool.
I’m interested in what else was done for NPM in the classroom. Also, was this a formative or summative assignment?