[LIT] poetry and scrolls; fluency and comprehension

[Dave Middlebrook]

You could give them the sheet.  That would work fine.

I look at it this way:  I've taken the poem and...
* changed all capital letters to lower case
* removed all punctuation
* removed all spaces between words
* removed all spaces between letters
* removed all line breaks (other than what is needed to fit the reformatted 
poem onto a sheet of paper)

So if you give them the sheet of paper, you haven't changed the purpose of 
the exercise -- which is to force your students to work hard to sound out 
the words, and in so doing perhaps develop a better connection to the sound 
of the poem that might get them engaged and carry them through to the point 
where they have a real emotional connection with, and deep comprehension of, 
this or any poem introduced in this way.

I think that the benefit of taking the last step and converting the page to 
a scroll, and thereby formatting the text as a single continuous line, is 
that it makes the point about having to find breathing places (pauses and 
stops) and make decisions about how those breathing places should look on 
paper (punctuation and line breaks).  It also makes compelling the need to 
break out the scissors and make cuts.  Most important in my opinion, the 
scroll becomes a manipulative.  I'm not sure that the page has that power. 
But I'd be interested in your thoughts on that.

One way to get around having to assemble 21 scrolls would be to give your 
students the page (have them work in small groups, so they can help each 
other), tell them to cut the lines into strips and assemble the scrolls 
themselves.  It won't take them long, and it will get them involved --  
physically, manually -- in making the text their own.  That is, after all, 
the reason for this exercise.  If they don't make the poem their own, they 
might as well be home or somewhere else.

That said, if you can't see your way to starting with a scroll, by all means 
try starting with the page.  Let me know how it goes.  This is still a work 
in progress -- a new idea in need of some vetting -- and I would be 
interested in your feedback.


Dave Middlebrook
The Textmapping Project
A resource for teachers improving reading comprehension skills instruction.
www.textmapping.org   |   Please share this site with your colleagues!
USA: (609) 771-1781
dmiddlebrook at textmapping.org




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Barbara Punchak" <bpunchak at verizon.net>
To: "'A list for improving literacy with focus on middle grades.'" 
<lit at literacyworkshop.org>
Sent: Thursday, December 14, 2006 9:27 PM
Subject: Re: [LIT] poetry and scrolls; fluency and comprehension


> Dave,
> I plan to use the sample poetry exercise with my 6th graders next week.  I
> know you mention cutting and pasting the lines of the poem...but I'd have 
> to
> do it for 21 groups.  Would it be too easy for 6th graders to "solve," if 
> I
> simply gave them the sheet, rather than doing all that cutting and gluing?
> Barbara/6th/FL