Emmalea Couch

“I” Poems- Emmalea Couch June 24, 2009

This article about the use of “I” poems to deepen students’ reading comprehension states that both reading and writing are cognitive activities and that when readers revisit a text, their understanding of it deepens and they are able to catch details that they overlooked on their first encounter. By transforming what they read into a different format (for instance, taking a story and creating a poem from the point-of-view of a character, object, or place in the story), students get inside a text. This helps them learn and retain what they have learned. The article also points out that educators of future teachers tend to model the teaching methods they hope their students will use in their own classrooms.

As a future English teacher, I may not have a classroom full of future educators. But I hopefully will have a classroom full of future thinkers. Could I apply this to thinking? Perhaps I can model thinking for my students the way I hope they will think (analytical, engaged, deep, etc).

As the article says, constructing “I” poems can be used as a pre-reading and post-reading activity. When done before reading, it provides students with background that enables them to better interact with the text while reading, which in turn helps teach the skill of activating previous and relevant knowledge when interacting with texts. Completed after reading, “I” poems help students interact with texts and retain what they read. “Poets sift experience.”

We saw examples of “I” poems used as pre- and post-reading activities. Could we extend this and use “I” poems as a guided reading activity for novels? Are there examples of this being done?

The article gave a few different variations of “I” poems: one, a very specific format to be filled in by students, arguing that imitation often accommodates innovation.

Imitation definitely inspires innovation at times. I read a Shakespearean sonnet, and I want to go out and write my own. There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, it’s a good thing. But when and where does imitation border or cross the line of plaigerism? Clearly here we are imitating a style, and that’s okay. But as future educators, we need to make sure that we know the rules about what can and cannot be mimicked so that we can help our students understand that, too. While reading this, I kep thinking about the movie Finding Forrester. I remember that in it Forrester, a writer, allowed a young man to use some of his writings to begin new stories. But the young man got accused of plaigerism when he turned in his work. So where do we draw the line? What is the actual rule?