Wednesday, April 1, 2015

With Determination - A Blackout Poem





April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating with many other bloggers by writing and sharing poetry.  Please check out the hashtag #digipoetry on Twitter - thank you Margaret Simon - to find more poems written by our blogging community.

My students are in the middle of a perseverance unit.  Each student is reading a biography and will write a literary essay on how their person persevered or overcame obstacles.

I wrote two essays about Wilma Rudolph to use as mentor texts.  I thought these essays would be a great way to create a Blackout Poem.  Here is how I created it.

First, I read through the essay looking for words or phrases that when pieced together, created something thoughtful or profound.  I learned the hard way to circle with a pencil first, and then block the words I wanted to use with a marker.  (I actually did this three times before I got it right!)  After blocking the words, I blacked out the remaining text with the marker, leaving my poem.



Determination
helped her to persevere
she had to fight back--somehow

With determination 
a new life was beginning

With determination 
she didn't let anything 
stand in her way

With determination
she overcame
to persevere

11 comments:

  1. WOW! WOW! WOW! I love, love, love this poem! I love that you made a blackout poem from your own writing! I love that you were able to get repetition in it. I'm so impressed. LOVE!!!! I may borrow your idea for one of my poems this month! Thanks Leigh Anne!

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  2. What a great idea! And you showed perseverance by trying it three times! I think I should piggyback and do a blackout poem. Hm, what text should I use? Thanks for the inspiration.

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  3. Wonderful that you showed us too, Leigh Anne. I love the repetition in your poem.

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  4. Love love this Leigh Anne. This makes so much sense and is beautiful. What a great model for your students and a way to bridge their current work to poetry. I'm thinking to grab this idea.. we just finished persuasive writing.

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  5. Love this!!! I am challenged!! I am working on mine.

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  6. This is great! I've seen blackout poetry before, but I like it even better when starting with your own writing! I will definitely use this idea with students!

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  7. Love the blackout poem. Last week I bought the book Newspaper Blackout, and I can't wait to try one too! I love your post and think it would be a great way to teach character traits along with poetry.

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  8. What a great idea! I love the slant on studying important people through a perseverance lens. This was perfect for blackout poetry. Your repeating line, "with determination," really pulled the poem together. Thanks for getting us all organized for National Poetry Month. I'm always happy to connect.

    Cathy

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  9. Great job! It really expresses the spirit of Wilma Rudolph and the theme of perseverance.

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  10. I love this on a whole lot of levels! First, I love the idea of using perseverance as a lens for biography. Our middle schoolers have been working with growth mindset stuff all year and I think this would fit in really, really well. Secondly, I love turning your essay into a blackout poem. I think it would help our kids really hone in on the essence of their essays! Can't wait to share this!

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  11. I love this! I love that you used your current unit of study and the essays your wrote and modeled to use as your backdrop for your block out poem! Narrowing down to those very important key words. Everything about this is great!

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