Blackout Poetry

I’ve spent even more time on Pinterest lately (which is quite impressive) compiling a list of activities that I would like to try in my classroom in the future. I have been especially focused on poetry because I. Hate. Poetry. I have never enjoyed learning about--and did not expect to enjoy teaching--poetry, so I wanted to find some extra fun and stimulating activities to get both my students and myself involved. As always, Pinterest did not disappoint, and I discovered an activity that I cannot wait to try: Blackout Poetry!

You can read the article that I found and check out some really awesome examples of student work here: http://thedaringenglishteacher.blogspot.com/2017/04/make-poetry-fun-with-blackout-poetry.html

I have outlined the steps for this activity below:

1.     Students choose one page from a novel or short story that has been covered in class over the course of the school year. The passage should be meaningful to the student in some way.

2.     They then choose a handful of words (you can’t choose to many or too few) that stand out to them from the passage.

3.     Next students begin to “black out” or color over the rest of the text in a black marker so that the words that stood out to them (and likely a few more for the sake of making the poem make sense) are the only visible words. The students are encouraged to create images or patterns while blacking out the text, and they may be as creative as they would like.

4.     Students then write a short response to answer each of the following questions: Why did you choose you passage? How is it meaningful to you? Why did you choose the specific words that you did? What made them stand out? What does your poem mean to you? Explain the visual elements of the project.

5.     Once the above steps are complete the students present their poems/artwork to the class and use the short response questions above to structure a 2-3 minute presentation of their project.

I love this project because it allows students to be creative, ties in previous texts, requires the students to choose meaningful passages/words and to think critically about them, and allows them to practice their public speaking skills! I would definitely be excited to teach this poetry lesson!