Summary / Duration
This unit focuses on the way poetry has been used to represent cities of the world. Students examine how poetic features are used to shape a range of meanings about urban experiences in different cities and time periods. / Sample term
4 weeks
Detail: Term 1
Unit Overview
This unit focuses on the way poetry has been used to represent cities of the world.In an increasingly urbanised, and globalisedculture, an understanding of theuniversal commonalities between globalcitiesas well as the idiosyncratic characteristics which set them apart from each other is important.Cities are social, intellectual and cultural hubs which arecomplex innature. Onthe one hand citiesofferemployment, nightlife, an eclectic mix of cultures and cuisines. On the other hand,cities canbe perceived as overcrowdedplaces where disconnection,crime and poverty fester.Many students will, at some time in their lives, find themselves immersedin a city or interactingwith others who have been conditioned by an urban lifestyle. Cities are dynamic and frenetic. It is not surprising then, that poets have responded to citieswith, (to quote William Wordsworth's definition of poetry),"a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings". In this unit students come to appreciate the way poets representtheir subjective attitudes to cities by shaping meaning in increasingly complex ways. Students are encouraged to respond to poetry using visual, spoken, collaborative, imaginative and humourous processes. Poetry, in its brevity and depth of meaning,is a vehicle through which students engage meaningfully with their widening world.The ability to annotateheightens a student's engagement with texts, stimulatingcritical analysis of meaning. Central tothis unit isexplicit instruction and modellingof a variety ofannotation processes. Students are encouraged to become increasingly independent in their annotationsas they deepen their knowledge of a range of different poetry forms and features. An equally important focus is on students building confidence in their personal interpretations of poems and being able to justify their perspectives with evidence fromtexts.
Outcomes / Duration
English K-10
›EN41A responds to and composes texts for understanding, interpretation, critical analysis, imaginative expression and pleasure
›EN43B uses and describes language forms, features and structures of texts appropriate to a range of purposes, audiences and contexts
›EN45C thinks imaginatively, creatively, interpretively and critically about information, ideas and arguments to respond to and compose texts
›EN47D demonstrates understanding of how texts can express aspects of their broadening world and their relationships within it / Term 1
Weeks 1 – 4
Text requirements / Text overview / Assessment overview
1. Close study of awiderangeoftypesofpoems
2. Examples of:
- print texts
- visual texts
- media, multimedia and digital texts
- Quality literature
- Australian literature
- Texts from other countries and times
- Texts written about intercultural experiences
- Texts that provide insights about the peoples and cultures of Asia
- Texts that include aspects of environmental and social sustainability
"A City Ditty", Eve Merriam
"To Behold a City", Ross Clark
"The City, the Tree", John Tranter
"City Trees", Edna St. Vincent
"William Street", Kenneth Slessor
"Late Ferry", Robert Gray
"Tokyo", John Tion Chunghoo
"To the City of Bombay", Rudyard Kipling
"In Honour of the City of London", William Dunbar
"London", William Blake
"Upon Westminster Bridge", William Wordsworth
"The Underground", Seamus Heaney
"Chicago", Carl Sandberg
"Broadway",Walt Whitman
"February Evening in New York", Denise Levertov
"Autumn Dusk in Central Park", Evelyn Scott
"From Brooklyn", Evelyn Scott
"Hollywood, Hollywood, Hollywood", Oresto Flavio Perdomo
"Paris I", Alan Seeger
"Beautiful City", Lord Alfred Tennyson
"Athens", John Milton
"Athens", Algernon Charles Swinbourne
"Athens", Nicholas Michell
"Beirut, Ornament of our World", Faiz Ahmed Faiz
"Kabul", John Tranter
"Ankara", Alan Gould
"To go to Lvov",Adam Zagajewski
"To go to S'apore", Alvin Pang
“Brussels”, Arthur Rimbaud
“Brussels”, John Tranter
Websites
Sydney)
article on urban greenery in Brisbane with images)
with over99 poems about cities and other urban matters
resource for amateur poetry about cities.
useful resource for poems about places. Provides a map of poetry based on cities and town around the world.
Videos
Filthy Cities: Medieval London,BBC, 2011
Filthy Cities: Revolutionary Paris, BBC, 2011
Filthy Cities: Industrial New York, BBC, 2011
-vertical farms, Singapore) / Assessment for learning
- Pre-assess student knowledge of poetic terms using a term/definition match-up task.
- Students compose a short paragraph reflecting their understanding of effective similes.
- Students complete a 100 word journal entry about "Late Ferry", using textual evidence to support their ideas.
- Students compose journal entry articulating what they have learnt about the way Japan has changed over the last 100 years, using evidence from the poem"Tokyo" to support their ideas.
- Students submit full annotation of "Paris I" by Alan Seeger to their teacher.
- Students compose a rap/limerick/parody entitled "Recipe for Being Urbane and Poetic", using examples from poetry studied during this unit.
- Students assess their peers' ability to use textual evidence from "Late Ferry" to support their ideas.
- Students assess their peers' ability to articulate how Tokyo has changed over the last 100 years, using evidence from "Tokyo" to support their ideas.
- Students compose a reflective journal entry which summarises their learning in this unit, with an emphasis on justifying their favourite poems and articulating their preferred method of annotating.
Outcomes to be assessed: EN4-1A,EN4-3B
Students submit TWO annotated poems, demonstrating their ability to organise their ideas around a poem, demonstrate understanding of how poetic form and features shape meaning.
Content / Teaching, learning and assessment
Stage 4 - Outcome 5
- compose a range of visual and multimodal texts using a variety of visual conventions, including composition, vectors, framing and reading pathway
- recognise and use appropriate metalanguage in discussing a range of language forms, features and structures
- respond to and compose imaginative, informative and persuasive texts for different audiences, purposes and contexts for understanding, interpretation, critical analysis, imaginative expression and pleasure
Teacher provides students with A4 paper and pencils. Explain that studentswill listen to a hypothetical scenario with their eyes closed and that when prompted they will open their eyes and draw the images that come to mind.Direct students to close their eyes and imagine."You are sitting in the back of a car on a long journey on a seemingly endless road through the Australian bush. You look out of the window to see that you are passing through a wide street in acountry town. Drowsily, you notice a post office, aChinese restaurant, a newsagent and a chemist. We're still not there, you think to yourself as you drift back to sleep. Half an hour later, you open your eyes again to see a suburban scene; largehouses with double garages,children playing in front gardens and people mowing lawns. You fall back to sleep as the radio plays quietly in the background. When you wake next, you find yourself in the middle of a city. Take a good look around the city.Remain with your imagination." Students draw imagesin response to prompts.
- What kind of buildings do you see in thecity?
- What kind ofpeople do you see in the city?
- What sounds canyouhear in thecity?
- What smells do you smellin thecity?
- What doesthe city taste like?
- What textures canyou feel in the city?
- What are some of the common features of cities? (Examples might include: sky-scrapers, big business, highly populated, eclectic population, theatres, cinemas, buses, taxis, cars etc.)
- What are some of the things thathave not been included in these representations of cities?
- Can you see any representations which convey a positive attitude to cities?
- Which representations appear to convey a negative attitude to cities?
Students select apeer's visual representation from the display. Provide students with A4 paper and direct them to fold the paper (landscape) into five columns, fourrows.
Students write "nouns/adjectives/verbs/adverbs/prepositions" as table headings in the first row.Using their peer's visual representation as stimulus, studentswrite one word in each corresponding box (15 words in total). Direct students to cut along the fold lines, so that theyhave 15 individual words. Studentsshuffle theirwords andpass the word bundle on to their neighbour. Using their peer's word pile, students arrange words in any order to create their own word representation freelyaddingor deletingwords as they see fit. Direct students to paste their wordarrangementinto their journals.Teacher explains to students that this is their first poem, and that, as part of this unit, they will learn how to use increasingly sophisticated poetic tools to learn how to write their own poems.
Teacher provides students with an A3map of the world. Direct students to paste this into their journal and explain thatthey will be "visiting" cities of the world through poetry. Teacher defines "evaluate" (make judgment) and instructs students to add to glossary. Teacher explains that students will locate the various cities they "visit" on this map labellingtitles/poets andusing a1 - 5star rating of theirpersonal evaluation of each poem.
Assessment for learning:
Pre-assess students' knowledge of poetic terms including: lines, persona,stanzas, rhyme, rhythm, pace, metaphor, simile, personification and visual imagery using a term/definition match-up activity.
Stage 4 - Outcome 1
- recognise, reflect on, interpret and explain the connections between their own experiences and the world in texts
- respond to and compose imaginative, informative and persuasive texts for different audiences, purposes and contexts for understanding, interpretation, critical analysis, imaginative expression and pleasure
- compose a range of visual and multimodal texts using a variety of visual conventions, including composition, vectors, framing and reading pathway
Students are instructed to write personal responses in their journal to the questions that follow:
Where is your nearest city? Have you ever been to a city? If so, describe your experience in 50 words. If you could live in any city in the world, which would it be and why? Why do you think people choose to live in cities? Why do somepeople avoid living in cities?
Teacher models a "pros and cons" (benefits and disadvantages) diagramon the board. Instruct students to form pairs and complete, in five minutes, a table of the pros andcons ofliving in cities. Instruct students to convey the positive/negative characteristicsvisually (eg pink font,smiley faces orticks for positive characteristicsand grey font,crosses orsad faces for negative characteristics).
Teacher demonstrates the writing of ONE chain poem using their favourite city demonstrating the rough, scrawling, imperfect nature of this flow of consciousness writing style, where each word added springs from an association they have made with the previous word. For example, the following words would be placed in a list down the centre of the board: "Bridge/water/bottle/coke/bubbles/blowing/wind/rain/fall/ouch"
In pairs, students select ONE city (Venice, Dubai, Hanoi, Jakarta, Johannesburg, Lima, Rio or any others that are NOT covered in this unit) to use as the subject of a chain poem. Paired students do a quick image search of their city (or teacher may provide images of cities). Instruct students to (individually) write 6 free word associations in a list down the centre of their paper. Allow about 30 seconds - 1 minute only. Note: Each word should "sprout" from a free association with the first word and so on.
Teacher instructs students to now add words/lines around the words in the centre. Students may change tenses, plurals, add or delete words as they like.
Provide students with selection of scraps (manila folders, tissue boxes, coloured paper, straws, wrappers). Students use ONE lesson to integrate their chain poem into a three-dimensional artwork. Students are encouraged to use size, framing, vectors, salience and reading pathways in their artwork.Students may change the written elements of their poem in any way they see fit. Students may like to barter with peers for scraps which are most appropriate to their chosen city. Art-poems are displayed around the room. Inform students that they may remain anonymous artists, or, if they are happy to be acknowledged for their work, to "autograph" their piece.
Stage 4 - Outcome 3
- engage with the language and structures of texts in meaningful, contextualised and authentic ways
- recognise and use appropriate metalanguage in discussing a range of language forms, features and structures
- describeandexplainqualitiesoflanguageintheirownandothers'textsthatcontributetotheenjoymentthatcanbeexperiencedinrespondingtoandcomposingtexts
Teacher provides students with hypothetical scenario.
You have been asked to judge a local poetry competition. The Head Judge has explained that every year, hundreds of non-poetic texts are submittedand need to be discarded from the competition.In groups students research “What is poetry?” and design a criteria/checklist/computer program which enables them to make a quick decision about whether submitted works arepoems or not. Optional:provide students with prompts on the board: Length? Structure? What does a poem look like? What does a poem sound like? What kind of language is used? Content? Style? What do you expect to find in a poem? (Responses mightinclude: stanzas, lines, brevity, powerful imagery, compactness, compression,emotive, poignant, dense, meaningful, lofty, descriptive, appeals to senses, colours).
Using student-created criteria/checklists/computer programs, label categories on the board with the following headings:"must have", "might have" and"will not have". Select individual students to add features to these categories tocheck understanding. Instruct students to write a 100 wordjournal entry which begins "Today I have learnt that poetry, as a form, is..."
Optional: Teacher provides students with different examples of types of text from magazines and newspapers (such as reviews, editorials, letters, cartoons). Ask students to test the effectiveness of their criteria/checklist/computer program. Is the criteria/checklist/computer program sufficiently preclusive to allow for accurate identification of poetry? If student criteria/checklist/computer program is erroneous (for example they come to the inaccurate conclusion that a review is a poem), then students must rework their criteria/checklist/computer program until retesting of texts comes to an accurate conclusion.
Students to compose brief personal responses intheir journal to the following questions:
- Can you remember the titles/lines/phrases of any poetry you have read before now?
- Do you like poetry? Why/Why not?
- Why do people write poetry?
- Who reads poetry?
- Why do people read poetry?
- Do your parents/teachersremember studying poetry at school? Do they have a favourite poem/s?
Stage 4 - Outcome 1
- respond to and compose imaginative, informative and persuasive texts for different audiences, purposes and contexts for understanding, interpretation, critical analysis, imaginative expression and pleasure
Teacher questions students to come to an agreed definition of "annotation" - to write notes around a text to come to a heightened understanding of the text's meaning and how features within the text help to shape its meaning/s.
Teacherprojects "A City Ditty" by Eve Merriam ( last accessed on 11/04/14)on the board. Teacher groups students and instructs them to come up with as many different methods for making notes around the poem (annotating) as possible. Methods might include using colours, codes, keys, shapes, short hand, arrows, font styles, highlighters, squiggles, abbreviations, text boxes, visual images and so forth.
Teacher selectsstudents to demonstratevarious methods ofannotationusing the poem on the board. Teacher selectsastudent to keepa running list of systemson the board under the heading "Methods for Annotating Poetry". Students take notes from the board.
Optional ICT: Students use "comment" features in Microsoft Word to annotate the poem.
Stage 4 - Outcome 1
- apply increasing knowledge of vocabulary, text structures and language features to understand the content of texts (ACELY1733)
- respond to and compose imaginative, informative and persuasive texts for different audiences, purposes and contexts for understanding, interpretation, critical analysis, imaginative expression and pleasure
- understand the use of punctuation conventions, including colons, semicolons, dashes and brackets in formal and informal texts (ACELA1532, ACELA1544)
- recognise and use appropriate metalanguage in discussing a range of language forms, features and structures
Students read "To Behold a City" by Ross Clark(Form and Feeling:Poetry for Secondary Students, Ed. Hamilton et al, Longman Australia, 2003) and copy/paste into their journals with the heading “Prose Poetry”.