"Where is there a place for students to choose their genres?"

Last spring, our school hosted literacy consultants Stevi Quate and Matt Glover to work with our staff for the same week. Stevi was focused on secondary literacy (MS/HS) while Matt worked with the elementary teams on their literacy units. Near the end of their week, they sat down with team leaders and the curriculum director to look over reading and writing units from K-12. A colorful matrix was created, color coding the different modes (narrative, informational, argument) and types of products (literary essay, realistic short story, etc.). 

When the dust settled, Stevi turned to me and asked this question of our middle school writing program, "Where is there a place for students to choose their genres?"

I looked her in the eye and answered, "No where." 

It's true, we have controlled every genre in every unit. We also control the type of product within that genre. We allow kids choice of topic within the structured genre and product type, but we don't have an "open" unit.  To make that happen, we would have to drop a unit, and the only one that is moderately "optional" is our poetry unit ("optional" because it doesn't neatly fit into the narrative/ informational/argument CCSS modes). 

I know my team feels strongly that the poetry unit is essential to our middle school writing program. Year after year, we see middle schoolers pouring out their hearts about big important issues in their poetry. Our struggling writers love the loose structure and low volume that poetry offers. Our strong writers embrace obscure references and hidden symbolism. Shy students perform proudly in front of audiences. Drama queens and kings slam their poems with gusto. 

And when we implemented the CCSS and revised our units to meet the standards, poetry worked for many of the language standards, especially those that addressed connotations and denotations of words, the power of strong verbs and nouns, and understanding and use of figurative language. So we felt good about keeping poetry in our year-long plan. 

But here's the thing: I still have Stevi's question in my head. If we want our kids to be motivated and self-directed writers, they should be able to choose a writing project at some point. 

So I offered a compromise: an after school creative writing club. Those writers that want a time and space and some feedback on their independent writing projects can join me an hour a week and get words on paper (or screens). Twelve enthusiastic writers signed up, most of whom had projects started or had an idea they've been waiting to write. One has already published her ongoing story on a fan fic site and gotten several hundred readers. All but one are in 6th and 7th graders (hmmm... what's up with the 8th graders?). 

I'm pleased there is interest out there for this open-ended writing club. I wish there were space in the year to extend it to all kids, but I just don't see how that will happen without a massive curriculum review/revision. For now, it's baby steps.

How do you balance the demands of the CCSS writing modes with open-genre writing units?

Reflections on Revision in the Poetry Unit

Big sigh. We have come to the end of our two-month-long poetry unit (first month- reading, second month- writing). I don't know why, but the poetry unit seems to fit so well into the third quarter of school. There is a lot of tough stuff to dig into (assonance, consonance, figurative language, symbolism, allusion), with an overall sense of playfulness and rule-breaking. Students are comfortable with each other in the class and with me, so are willing to write poems from their hearts. As eighth graders, the world of Shel Silverstein is left behind while they tackle extended metaphors by Langston Hughes and Longfellow, the cryptic language of e. e. cummings, and the sound devices of Poe. This mix of challenging curriculum within the context of short accessible texts and manageable writing expectations lifts the confidence and skill of nearly every student in my room.

Students submit two poetry anthologies as their assessments during the unit: a reading anthology of poems they analyze for meaning and music, and a writing anthology of their own poems, two of which are analyzed for meaning and music. Each anthology finishes with a closing statement reflecting on their learning. I learn so much about students from the closing statements: their process, their thinking, their discoveries, and their attitude. As I read closing statements from the writing anthologies yesterday, I was struck by how many students mentioned the value of revising and how the hard work of revision paid off in much better poems. Here is a sampling from the fifteen I read yesterday (names withheld to protect anonymity):

"One of the most important things I learned was that my first draft will never be my final product. After I had written my poem, I initially found it hard to edit and revise because in my mind I felt that my poem was good just the way it was. When I started revising, I was able to make my poems much better"

"I wrote lots of poems this unit, but I only chose a couple to revise and make worth reading. There were lots of different ways I chose to revise. For example one way was to completely scrap the poem and start from the beginning, but still write about the same idea. Another way I revised was to change the line breaks to add or take away emphasis to words. When I was writing poems, I took a lot of time just picking the right words to fit into each line."

"Throughout this unit, one of the biggest things I learnt was that revising will do marvelous things for my poems! Before this unit, I was very lazy and closed minded about revising poems. After I learnt new ways to revise and tried them, I realized that a poem can turn into exactly what I imagined after revising!" 

"The revising process for writing poetry is pretty hard, but once you revise you will get a feeling of accomplishment that you don’t get very much. A good tip of advice would be that not all poems make it through, some poems are not going to work as well as others and some will not satisfy you. I threw away 17 poems because I spent so much time revising them and they didn’t convey the message I was hoping to have them convey. Poetry is hard, but if you write enough you will discover that some topic work better with you than others, and that is when you write a great poem."

"One thing that I think was very cool that I did during this unit, was transforming a first draft I wrote into something completely different and new. My poem: ‘Eyes’, originally was a mentor poem that had a completely different meaning, about how much I liked and also hated blank pages. After some major editing, that simple poem turned into a symbolic poem about life."

"Sometimes, it was hard for me to actually bring myself to go back and edit my poems because I generally thought they were good as they were. By going back on my poems I learnt that revision is really important because even the small changes such as different punctuation and word choice can make a big difference. I also went back and made other changes such as trying to add in different poetic devices, and creating line breaks so change the flow of the poem itself. Doing those sorts of edits really helped me enhance my poems."

"It took a while to come up with these ideas. They all started as mere ideas that had only a bit of potential to be bigger and better poems. Revising them was hard, as at first they seemed like regular poems that couldn’t be changed to make better. Later on, it became clear that they had to be changed. So I worked harder on these poems compared to most of my other poems and they ended up as some of my best work. I learned a lot from this. I realized it’s hard to edit poems to make them a lot better than before. When you first write a poem, you feel like it’s the best that it could ever be, and that you can’t really change it to make it better. After learning multiple techniques of revising poems, it became a lot easier to revise them, as you become more educated in using strategies to change. The longer and harder a poem is worked on, the better it becomes and the more it changes into becoming a better poem." 

I know! I was actually as stunned as you are at the willingness eighth graders had toward revising their poems. Only writers who are committed to their ideas will work that hard to make their writing as good as it can be. This is the first time all year I have seen that kind of commitment, and maybe the only time I'll see it. Poetry is a special genre, and has great power for middle school students. 

I need to end this with a quote from one of my most reluctant (male) writers, a boy with the typical "school sucks" eighth grade attitude, who scoffed at every "try-it" poetry generating idea, who covered his paper as I walked by:

"I have learned that poetry is within everyone and everyone gets something out of it. Like me. I get to write the truth and I get to get happiness out of it. I think that everyone would be more happy if they wrote poetry more in their life and realize what life really is and how wonderful life is just with a little poetry."