Tech Integration: Enhancement or Interference?

A month ago, I sat down to look at the arc of the upcoming Poetry Reading unit. Because of some curriculum shifting, we had four full weeks for reading and analyzing poetry, as opposed to three in previous years. This is good, I thought, because it always seemed so rushed. This extra week will allow kids to really spend time digging into their poetry analysis and get their anthology projects done without stress.

Here I am with that fourth week ahead of me, and I'm thinking, "They need more time! They won't get their anthology project done in only five classes! I must extend the due date!"

What happened? First, there were the interruptions: one day for MAP testing, one day for a science field trip, one day for the visiting author workshop, one day for professional development... Oh, that's almost a whole school week.

Still... I'm only asking them to choose one poem and one song lyrics to analyze. I put in checkpoints along the way: after one week I want to see one poem you've chosen, after two weeks I want to see one poem with annotations and thematic thinking, after three weeks I want to see the second poem with annotations on meaning and music. Each checkpoint was a scramble. "I don't know what to choose!" "I can't find one I like!" "Oh, you want me to do margin notes?" "Can I give it to you tomorrow?"

image from Forbes website

I think back to how the poetry selection process was structured. My teaching partner and I are sharing a cart of poetry books from the library. We arranged English Language Arts and Social Studies classes so that they didn't overlap with our partner's; this way the cart can travel up and down the hallway for students to access in class. During the first week, the rule was: BOOKS ONLY! Although students were reluctant at first, the range of modern, thematic, classic, and familiar poetry in the books drew them in. Soon, sticky notes marking which poems they liked were decorating the edges of the books like fringe on cowboy chaps.

The second week marked the launch into lyrics, a new form of poetry for eighth grade. Such excitement (until they heard the "school appropriate language" rule)! At this point, vetted poetry websites like poetry.org and poemsandpoets.org, as well as a vetted song lyrics site, were opened up to the students. Boom! All eyes on screens. No hands touched the books. And no analysis happened until the checkpoint deadlines loomed (frantic scribbling minutes before the end of class!). 

So I have to wonder: Did the addition of technology enhance or interfere with the objectives of this unit?

image from engagementworx website

Did the enormous quantity of poems on the websites become overwhelming? Were the sites unusable for eighth graders who haven't yet formulated a list of favorite poets or poems? Were they randomly selecting and skimming, unable to settle into deep reading and thinking, distracted by the links and tabs and options available?

I think having them choose (clean) lyrics is part of the delay. They are so motivated and excited about this, however, that I don't want to change to a different form or restrict their choices (beyond the "school appropriate" rule). 

So how can we do this differently next year? I am a big believer in student choice, so I don't want to hand students five poems to analyze and turn in for a grade. On the other hand, maybe they have too much choice. The choice of poetry books on the cart seemed manageable. The choice of books, websites, and lyrics sites seems unmanageable. What if we chose 20 poems for students to choose from, and made them available as .pdfs in a shared Google Drive folder? Is that restricting them too much? 

If I keep lyrics as a new poetry form for eighth grade, and I want to, then perhaps I need to delay introducing it until after the second week. They could be thinking about it at home, but class time would be for reading poetry and practicing the strategies learned in minilessons for the first two weeks. Having a tight one-week choose-and-analyze deadline may circumvent the spinning wheels syndrome I'm seeing now.

There is a lot of great stuff happening during this Poetry Reading Unit. Kids are excited about poetry. They find poems that connect to their emotions and lives. They delight in discovering a symbol or a hidden musical device like assonance. They love digging deep into the meaning of a beloved song. They just need to spend less time skipping around and spend more time in the actual work of thinking. Four weeks flies by quickly!