Poetry Blogging

Blogging about Poetic Devices

Subject – Language Arts, English, Poetry
Grade – 6-12
Topic – Poetic Devices

This is an ongoing learning activity where students identify the definition and purpose of using a specific poetic device in writing. Students post information about the poetic device and use this device in their own writing. After adding this information and a sample poem to their blog, students read peer blogs and respond using appropriate feedback. This activity is originally created for a poetry class that I teach. The class meets every other day for half of the school year. However, this weekly blogging activity can be utilized in most English and language arts classes. Teachers can modify the activity to include elements of plot, literary elements, vocabulary, etc.

Objectives:
Students will be able to appropriately use the internet to identify information related to a selected topic

Students will be able to appropriately post information and writing samples to a personal blog

Students will be able to respond to classmates’ blogs in an educational way; giving information about how the selected device helped or hurt their writing

Students will learn the definition and purpose of selected poetic devices

Students will research how different poetic devices are utilized in poetry that can be found on the internet

Students will write their own poems using that week’s poetic device to enhance their writing

Prior to the Blogging Activity:
Students need to create an email account in order to sign up for a blog. If students already have an email account, they can skip this step.

Once and account is created, students register with Blogger.com (or any other free blogging site) and post their first blog. This initial blog is to help students understand how blogging works. Students can choose any topic to write about. It is important that students do utilize the same blogging site so that they are able to “follow” each other’s blogs.

The teacher will create a list of the students’ blog pages so that students can view each other’s blogs and add themselves as “friends” or “followers” to the site.

Students then respond to a minimum of three posts written by students in the class. This will help students understand how to communicate about information found on each other’s blogs.

Learning Activity:
At the beginning of each week the teacher will introduce a poetic device to the class (Ex. Personification)

The goal for the week is for students to research information about the poetic device, understand the purpose of using the poetic device, find a poem that uses the device, identify how the poetic device enhanced the poem, and finally write their own poem using the device.

The weekly poetic device and procedure for blogging can be found on my school website. Students visit the website in order to identify the poetic device of the week and the guidelines.

School Website: http://www.mtps.com/80520101115502547/cwp/browse.asp?A=3&BMDRN=2000&BCOB=0&C=56486

Students then respond to each others’ blog posting information about how the poetic device helped or hurt their poem. Students also include comments about the poem that may or may not be related to the poetic device that was researched.

Students will be graded on how well they covered each of the guidelines for posting information about the poetic device as well as their use of higher order thinking when reflecting about others’ poems.


Roadblocks:
The only roadblock I ran into was adding this information to my school website. Once I typed in the feedback guidelines page and posted it, it seemed as if all the information was lost and no updates took place. I decided to wait a few minutes for the updates to appear; however, the new page still did not appear. I decided to type a new feedback guidelines page, but found that the old one did exist and just wasn’t able to be viewed at the time. If you are unable to see the feedback guidelines page on my school website, I am still working on fixing this problem. Sorry for the inconvenience.

I imagine that when I begin this activity with students, they will have difficulty getting used to the blog site. I plan on giving students the ability to work on this assignment in class for the first week so that we can iron out any problems together. Once all problems are fixed and students are comfortable with blogging, they will work on this activity outside of school.