You could give them the sheet. That would work fine. I look at it this way: I've taken the poem and... * changed all capital letters to lower case * removed all punctuation * removed all spaces between words * removed all spaces between letters * removed all line breaks (other than what is needed to fit the reformatted poem onto a sheet of paper)
So if you give them the sheet of paper, you haven't changed the purpose of the exercise -- which is to force your students to work hard to sound out the words, and in so doing perhaps develop a better connection to the sound of the poem that might get them engaged and carry them through to the point where they have a real emotional connection with, and deep comprehension of, this or any poem introduced in this way. I think that the benefit of taking the last step and converting the page to a scroll, and thereby formatting the text as a single continuous line, is that it makes the point about having to find breathing places (pauses and stops) and make decisions about how those breathing places should look on paper (punctuation and line breaks). It also makes compelling the need to break out the scissors and make cuts. Most important in my opinion, the scroll becomes a manipulative. I'm not sure that the page has that power. But I'd be interested in your thoughts on that. One way to get around having to assemble 21 scrolls would be to give your students the page (have them work in small groups, so they can help each other), tell them to cut the lines into strips and assemble the scrolls themselves. It won't take them long, and it will get them involved -- physically, manually -- in making the text their own. That is, after all, the reason for this exercise. If they don't make the poem their own, they might as well be home or somewhere else. That said, if you can't see your way to starting with a scroll, by all means try starting with the page. Let me know how it goes. This is still a work in progress -- a new idea in need of some vetting -- and I would be interested in your feedback. Dave Middlebrook The Textmapping Project A resource for teachers improving reading comprehension skills instruction. www.textmapping.org | Please share this site with your colleagues! USA: (609) 771-1781 [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----- Original Message ----- From: "Barbara Punchak" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "'A list for improving literacy with focus on middle grades.'" <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, December 14, 2006 9:27 PM Subject: Re: [LIT] poetry and scrolls; fluency and comprehension > Dave, > I plan to use the sample poetry exercise with my 6th graders next week. I > know you mention cutting and pasting the lines of the poem...but I'd have > to > do it for 21 groups. Would it be too easy for 6th graders to "solve," if > I > simply gave them the sheet, rather than doing all that cutting and gluing? > Barbara/6th/FL _______________________________________________ The Literacy Workshop ListServ http://www.literacyworkshop.org To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/lit_literacyworkshop.org. Search the LIT archives at http://snipurl.com/LITArchive
