QCR523 3rd Blog Post

I’m going to admit too that I have not been really creative for my classes, partly due to the lack of time and having to squeeze so many poems in a span of a couple of weeks. For my class, one relatively creative lesson that I have conducted with the Secondary Two students is for the poem "Daffodils" by Wordsworth.

For the class, I was focusing on mood and very briefly, tone of poem. So I basically played two videos of the poem. One video was this rap version of the poem with a mascot squirrel dancing and rapping energetically. The second video is of the same poem, but with a more mellow and relaxing mood to it. After each video, I asked students on their feelings from listening and viewing these videos. Then I got the students to decide which they liked better and which they think is more suitable for the poem.

Following that, I basically explained to the students that in both instances, what influences the students in their perceptions are probably the music and images. However, since normally there will be no accompanying music when we read poetry, the focus here will lie on the images. Through the process of reading, they could visualize the images in the poem.

I got students to list down what are the images that they can see from the poem. As some students are more visual, students can draw as well what are the images that they can see. Students are to quickly do this within 5 minutes. After that I got some students to share on their lines/drawings. They are to also share of their thinking processes in deciding/drawing the images and how this impacted the overall mood of the poem at that point. Finally, I got the students to look at the last two lines, and asked the students what kind of feeling they think the poet is experiencing and how this relates to the overall mood of the poem.