Constructing Knowledge of British Poets

I am not a lecturer. I don't enjoy sitting at the front of my class waxing and waning on critical theory. Instead, I prefer for my students to construct their own knowledge. In this post, I hope to demonstrate how that happens in one of my lessons.

Every year, I put a list of British poets up on the wall for my twelfth graders to pick a name from. Some of the names are familiar to them, many are not. I suggest they go with their gut feeling when deciding on a name. Hilarity ensued this year when one of my students picked Stevie Smith, expecting a male poet. He had a bit of a surprise, but was a good sport.

Then I set the students free to research. I want them to learn anything and everything about their poet. Their assignment? Create a presentation in the Ignite format. The presentation must give a short biography of their poet, compare their poet to another author or a character in a book we've already read, and share a few lines of one of their most famous poems. I've spoken about this in other blog posts, but I'll repeat it here. Students give a five minute presentation with 20 slides. The slides are on a 15 second timer. This keeps the presentations short and snappy and fun to watch. After a few days of researching and building the presentations, the students are ready to present.

Over the course of a few days of presentations, the students get an excellent snapshot of British poetry. Are they going to remember every poet? No. But that is not my goal - I want them to understand the depth and breadth of British poets. We have a lot of fun, but more important... the students remember their poets. REALLY remember. As in, they make creative, witty references to the poets for the rest of the year and beyond.

After the presentations are done, it's on to the poetry roundtable. For this assignment, the students are given time to research two current events that they think their poet would have an opinion on if they were living in modern days. The students create a nameplate for their poet to put in front of themselves during the roundtable. The nameplate must contain both the name of their poet and some sort of iconic image that helps define who this poet was/is. We move the tables into a semi circle and set up court. The students put out their nameplates, and then take turns sharing a short summary of a current event and we open up the floor for discussion. Each student speaks as if they were their poet.

The round table is at times raucous, loud, insightful, poignant, and witty. Everything that I'd expect if you had gathered a group of famous British poets in one room and let them loose. Dylan Thomas was in his own world. Lord Byron wouldn't stop talking (about himself). William Blake... was interesting.

I look forward to this assignment every year because it is such an enjoyable way to study the British poets.