Ninth Grade Students Dive Deep Into Poetry Unit

by Assistant Head of School for Academics David Long

Brain research suggests that giving students choice, relating the curriculum to their lives, and providing opportunities for them to apply their learning to new mediums increases student engagement and deepens their learning. Upper Learning English Language Arts teachers Amy Robinson ('00) and Danielle Reed set out to do this with their 9th-grade poetry unit. 

Ms. Reed had her students investigate different poets to learn about their style and the different types of poems that one creates. Students were encouraged to ask their teachers to share their poems for the students’ research! For their culminating project, students created an anthology that is a mix of poems from their research, along with six poems that the students created themselves. Students were given the opportunity to share their work via a poetry coffee house that provided a venue for them to share and celebrate each other’s work. 

Ms. Robinson’s students were asked to take a poem and mix in song lyrics and poetry of their own to create something new. Students were given the choice to create a song, video, or collage to share their work. Both classes gave students the opportunity to apply what they learned to create something new to share with their peers. In the end, students in both classes played the game of learning while deepening their appreciation of poetry and the process behind the creation of a poem.