Self Assessment of Cut-And-Paste Poetry Lesson

 Overall:

            The girls each made colorful, creative word banks that reflected and exercised their own views of the painting (Aunt Ella story illustration), as well as their knowledge of basic parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs mainly, but also some conjunctions, prepositions, and articles). They worked successfully in groups (of 4 or 5) to create aesthetic, creative, flowing cut-and-paste poems, and they all read, outloud, lines from their poems during share time. They all participated in discussions and provided thoughtful answers on their evaluation sheets.

(Specifically) What worked:

·         All of the girls enjoyed learning about Rockwell first; the preliminary presentation (by Melinda Georgeson, at NRM) also served to put the rest of the work in a nice context of illustrative, visual language. (i.e. Evaluation responses mentioned: “Every picture that Rockwell made had a whole story behind it,” “…Norman Rockwell worked really hard,” “…some artists, like Norman Rockwell, use illustration to tell a story,” “…he focused on color transparency and complementary (colors) in most of his work…”)

·         Discussing poetry/writing and illustration terms before the activity also helped to set the context and get the girls thinking about their work as well as connections between (cut-and-paste) poetry and (Rockwell’s) illustration. (i.e. A lot of the girls reflected they learned that “Poetry doesn’t have to rhyme,” or “doesn’t have to be made with complete sentences;” this was one of the things we discovered/covered during our preliminary discussions.)

·         Allowing single work to make the word banks, before combining into groups allowed even some of the more timid girls to participate. It also encouraged individual voices to be heard in the poems’ words’ choices and illustrations. This helped each participant to see how her own work influenced or took part in the whole. (i.e. Chaperones’ responses stated, “Even the more hesitant could and did participate,” “Everyone has something to contribute and makes it unique to all…”)

·         Group work encouraged collaboration, and it made the daunting task of “writing a poem” easy to divide and conquer. (i.e. Evaluations responses mentioned things like : “Working in a group makes work easier,” “If you work together then you can get work done,” “It is fun, everyone participates,” “Sometimes it is easier to work with people and other times it’s not,” “Everyone can put great thoughts together that can create brilliant pieces…”

·         Having each group use the same painting offered just enough guidance to keep them on track and focused, while allowing them to write whatever they saw or felt in that painting encouraged variety within the sameness of the work. (i.e. Participants reflected their favorite parts: “Cutting things because I can pick the shape,” “Being able to do whatever I wanted with the words because it made it fun,” “Working in a group because we get to see everybody’s ideas,” “I liked learning about the paintings because I like learning new things,” “…when we wrote the words down and decorated them…(“because I like to color and draw”)”)

·         The chosen supplies were simple enough that each group and participant had relatively instant satisfaction with their work, while also allowing for a wide variety of interpretations.

·         Completing this poetry exercise in the context of Norman Rockwell Museum allowed deep connections to be made that might otherwise not have been seen (ex. in a “strictly” Creative Writing class, or in a “strictly” Visual Art class). (i.e. Participants responded that “(both the painting and the poems were) flowing,” “Our cut-and-paste poems describe and make a story, just like Rockwell’s paintings do,” “(both the painting and the poems were) original(s),” “The similarities are the same feeling,” “The setting (of the painting) made sense with the words (of the poem) and facial expressions (of the painting)…” A chaperone responded that she liked how “our words came from the painting, which came from a story (of words)…circular! Both “paint a story.”)

(Specifically) What I would change:

·         I felt like the Girl Scouts were getting a little tired of the tour time as we began to share the poems; if I could run this again, I would have shortened or lessened the number of paintings they discussed so that they could get into the activity a little quicker. Versus being a “gallery tour and then a gallery activity session,” I would have made it a more cohesive lesson of the language of art really coming together with the language of poetry. (Likely it felt a little more disjointed for me, personally, because I did not lead the “gallery tour” segment of the day.)

·         I might try to introduce a variety of paintings for the participants to choose from to create their word banks. While having them all focus on one painting produced effective results, it might be neat to see what differences might happen in content and color if I split the girls up into groups first, designated a different painting to each group, and then had them create their word banks and cut out/combine their words for their poem. I would assume their poems would read and look differently, depending on the paintings they were reflecting. That could lead to interesting discussion, as well. (This new lesson plan format might be best for older-aged groups, so that the dialogue could reach even deeper, into what dynamics happened between the paintings, word banks, and final poems.)

·         In future replications of this lesson, I  will remember to stress the importance that the participants SHOULD NOT WRITE MORE WORDS AFTER THEY FORMED GROUPS. While it did not seem to happen during my activity today, I overheard some of the groups saying they could “add other words to make it make more sense as they went along.” At this point, I gently reminded the groups (as a whole class) that they should work only with what they currently had, keeping in mind that a poem does not have to be made from complete sentences, or to “make perfect sense.”