Gill

Write a short summary of your piece, featuring the 'big idea' or 'take-home message' you gained from reading it (about 100-200 words)
Poetry has always been a boring unit in school. I can remember reading Dickinson, that dude that made his text appear all goofy on the page, and other great poets. I remember all of this as boring; it didn't connect to me. In fact, only frost's Road Less Traveled had any interest to me because at least with that "great" poem, there was interpretation involved--something to figure out. This is what Gill's article is about; the misunderstanding that kids get of what exactly poetry. They think that it is this esoteric thing for adults and certainly not something the children such as themselves could do. Hill argues that poetry need be defined differently in schools and that texts chosen to be used for poetry units be ones that offer this new definition: "Poetry is a way to share our thoughts or feelings that is enjoyable to read and write."
Discuss whether and how you would use this approach at your grade level, where it could fit within the language arts curriculum in your classroom, and what it offers for enriching writing instruction beyond what you thought about as you completed Task 1 of this module.
This could be a very fun way to get the creativity out of students as they write. I think it is absolutely essential to use this approach for poetry in schools otherwise I believe that students will come out with a negative attitude about poetry as so many adults do--school doesn't help you appreciate poetry (currently). The people who do enjoy it I would be willing to bet found other means of educating themselves about poetry.
Also identify what you think you need to learn to do as a professional in order to use this approach well with your students.
I would need to use the article's advice to find texts that represent poetry in this way.
Lastly, how have any of the ideas in this module (writer's workshop, assessment, analysis of student work, jigsaw articles) helped you to think about the types of assessment necessary for informing your unit development? Even if your unit is not focused squarely on writing, what might you need to consider about your students as WRITERS, as you plan for instruction? (To review an example of how writing assessment informs a 3rd grade teacher's instruction more broadly, review pp. 82-3 in Book Club Plus!)
This mod has helped me to see the many different ways that assessment can be used in writing assessment. My lit unit is one of those that definitely is not focus very much on writing (writing is present though). So one that I will have to do is make sure that what little writing is included is something that helps me to learn about my students. What kind of assessment will be most able to help me with that? Since I don't know a whole lot about my students writing abilities just yet (we haven't done much writing in class) I need to remember that there will be all sorts of different achievement levels...so perhaps when planning it will be best to try to reach writing through the reading strategies that we are focusing on because those two things are linked (as we saw in one of the second grade videos).