Curriculum Map: Community in Poetry

Thematic Unit: Reading, Writing, Social Studies

Learner Population*

• 18 students
• Language Proficiency:
  • 8 students are native English speakers (3 of these students have a second language in the home as well)
  • 5 ELL students in intermediate fluency stage
  • 3 ELL students in beginning fluency stage
  • 2 ELL students in the speech emergent stage
• Learning differences in the class:
  • 2 students with diagnosed ADHD
  • 1 student with diagnosed autism
  • 1 student with diagnosed dyslexia
  • 1 student undergoing neuro-pysch evaluation with suspected processing disorder and/or ADHD; 3 additional students with suspected ADHD

Learner Profile Information

This thematic unit comes after a unit on economics, so students will have a baseline understanding of concepts such as goods and services, bartering, money, and natural resources, human resources, and capital resources. These vocabulary charts will remain up during our Community in Poetry unit.

In the class we have students reading at F&P levels ranging from K to V. Most students have fairly good literal comprehension, but I foresee the skill of making inferences as a likely challenge for several students as they practice interpreting poetry and identifying the theme of a poem. A handful of students (including my students in the speech emergent stage as well as my dyslexic student) are still building their reading fluency, and will need to be able to read a poem several times to take time to decode new words and practice reading with increasing fluency. Most of my students with either diagnosed or suspected ADHD find it challenging to consistently recall details from their texts, and will benefit from specific note-taking strategies to build this skill.

In writing, some students benefit from a lot of scaffolding to organize their thinking and structure their sentences, while other students can adeptly write grammatically correct complex sentences that integrate new and prior information. About half of the class continues to benefit from visual reminders to use beginning capitalization and end punctuation, and will likely appreciate the flexibility that poetry offers in this area! In order to adapt the expectations for the varied levels of writing (and English) proficiency, students will have the ability to choose what style of poetry to use for their final product. I will confer with students to come to an agreement about what expectation for their total production makes sense (e.g. if they choose to write haiku, will they need to write more than one haiku?).
*In reality my class consists of 18 students, all native English speakers, who are a mix of 3rd and 4th grade. For this learner population description I have fictionalized just a bit.

Enduring Understandings

• Poetry is different from prose
• Poets get ideas from their lives, identities, experiences, and the world around them
• Poetry can be used to reflect something you have seen or experienced or to imagine something you would like to see or experience
• Poets make intentional decisions about white space, line breaks, rhythms/rhymes, language, and punctuation

Guiding Questions

• What makes a sustainable (and sustaining) community?
• What is a poem?
• How do poets show their ideas about what makes a sustainable (and sustaining) community?

Standards to Assess

• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.4.4.B Read grade-level poetry orally with accuracy, appropriate rate, and expression on successive readings.
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.4.2 Determine a theme of a poem from details in the text; summarize the text.
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.4.5 Explain major differences between poems, drama, and prose, and refer to the structural elements of poems (e.g., verse, rhythm, meter) when writing or speaking about a text.
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.4.5 With guidance and support from peers and adults, develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, and editing. 
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.4.6 With some guidance and support from adults, use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing as well as to interact and collaborate with others.
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.4.3.B Choose punctuation for effect.
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.4.5.A Explain the meaning of simple similes and metaphors (e.g., as pretty as a picture) in context.
• Maryland Social Studies Standard 4.0: Students shall inquire about decisions made by individuals and groups using economic reasoning in order to understand the historical development and current status of economic principles, institutions, and processes needed to be effective citizens, consumers, and workers participating in local communities, the nation, and the world.

Mentor Texts/Mentor Authors (initial list)

• Joy Harjo (Remember)
• Elizabeth Alexander (Praise Song for the Day)
• Minnie Bruce Pratt (Walking Back Up Depot Street)
• Langston Hughes (Daybreak in Alabama, Dream Variations)
• Nikki Giovanni (Knowville, Tennessee)

Technology Resources & Tools

• YouTube, Poetry Foundation, Poetry Out Loud, Library of Congress, Poets.org, Poets.org Incredible Bridges
• Epic
• Flipgrid
• Smart Board
• Book Creator

How the Use of Classroom Technology, Online Learning Tools, and Resources Will Support Student Learning

• YouTube, Poetry Foundation, Poetry Out Loud, Library of Congress, Poets.org
• Epic
• Flipgrid
• Smart Board
• Book Creator

In this unit one of the most important uses of technology will be making use of a variety of online resources so students can listen to poetry. Websites such as YouTube, Poetry Foundation, Poetry Out Loud, Library of Congress, and Poets.org will be of great use during this unit. Rhythm, syllables, speed, pauses, and more play such an important role in making meaning of poetry, and children who don’t have much experience reading poetry may not have a sense of the many ways poetry can sound. Particularly for language learners, listening to poetry can offer a different access point to understanding. If resources allow, this unit would be well-served by a listening station which students can use during reading time to listen to poems we have read as a class as well as new poems. They could even use this listening station to practice reading poetry with the recording before trying to read the poem (or a new poem) on their own. 

Relatedly, Epic online library will also be quite useful for this unit. It has a number of books of poems, and is a great resource for finding books of different reading levels. It also has books on how to write poetry, which can be quite helpful for the Writing portion of this unit. 

Flipgrid can be used both in class and for homework as a tool for students to practice reading/performing poetry in a low-stress environment. Students can try as many times as they like to get their reading right. For language learners, having the opportunity to record themselves reading poetry out loud may feel less stressful than having to read on the spot in front of someone else. I intend to use Flipgrid for the peer review process, but it could also be used for regular homework throughout the unit to give students more chances to practice reading poetry out loud.

There are a few instances, particularly in the Social Studies portion of the unit, where the class will create a shared list of characteristics or needs. A Smart Board can be used in these cases both to make this shared list easily visible, as well as to save the collaborative lists for future reference. Allowing students to add contributions in writing, instead of only orally, integrates more language skills into a single lesson.

Book Creator will be used for the final product for reading and writing. Students will create their own ebooks of their poetry. Because Book Creator has an audio recording feature, students can not only type their poems up and format them according to their artistic preference, but they can also apply their practice reading poetry orally and an audio book feature to their books.