FOUND POETRY

The Bumblebee Flies Anyway

PURPOSE: The purpose of this exercise to let students learn new words and then apply them in a form that may be unfamiliar: poetry. It is hoped that this exercise will make poetry fun for students.

STEP 1: Select a Passage

Choose a passage. I like to use a passage from chapter one and use this exercise the day after we read chapter one. I use the following passage on pages 5-6. I delete the names of the book's characters and insert pronouns or other words.

The boy walked down the corridor, heading for the fresh air. The nurse had said he could stroll the grounds today and smell the lilacs. Then she had forgotten that he could not smell the lilacs or food cooking or anything else. His sense of taste had also been banished. Approaching the other guy's room, he saw a stranger at the doorway, an outsider dressed in outsider clothes, blue pants, tan jacket. He was carrying a package. Strangers were rare in the Complex. As he watched, the stranger opened the package and pulled out a telephone, like a magician on a stage. A sleek streamlined telephone, green, one of the fancy ones. The stranger stepped into the other guy's room. A telephone for him? Must be, he thought. That guy, the bastard.

The word bastard may cause some controversy so feel free to change it as necessary.

STEP 2: Print and Cut

Type your selected passage with a large font - perhaps a 22 or 24. Type it big enough that it fills an entire single sheet. This is your master. Photocopy the master onto cardstock. Then cut all the words up and put the word fragments into an envelope. There should be an envelope for every student in your class. If you want to do this as a group project, make enough envelopes for the desired number of groups. If you don't want to cut every single word, cut out phrases.

STEP 3: Making Poetry

Give the envelopes full of words to the students. They are to make poems out of the words they find in the envelope. They can add a few scrap words like and, it, or I. If they need to make words singular, plural, or possessive, they can do that too. Beyond this, they should construct their poems out of the words they have in the envelope. By giving the students the words, one of the major challenges of writing poetry is overcome. The students just have to arrange the words. Give them tape or glue and a piece of paper to mount their found poems. They must use at least 40 of the words. Give them at least ½ an hour to experiment with the words. Ask the students to write on a topic so that they have some structure to their poems. You may wish to assign a topic or if you feel your students can handle it, let them pick the topic that they see in the envelope of words.

STEP 4: Poetry Share

Invite students to share their poems. Feel free to tell them at this point that the words came from last period's reading assignment. Have an overhead or handout of the words prepared so that students can compare their poems to the original passage.

STEP 5: Assessment

This assignment provides a nice change of pace from your concentration on the novel. It need not be a bridge for any other work done with the novel. It is just a means of getting kids to enjoy poetry. Students should be assessed on meeting the criteria of the assignment. Did they use at least 40 words? Did they focus on a particular topic? Did they appropriately use the class time to make their poems?