Don’t Just Paraphrase A Poem!

I asked my students to read a poem. Then they had to:

Paraphrase each line of the poem. Write your version next to the original line

I’m not even going to get into the pointlessness of this task. Why were my most brilliant students rewording a poem, line by line? What’s the point of that?

Ugh. Regret!

If we’re going to make students re-write a poem, let’s start with an interesting question. Something that will get their brains buzzing.

Let’s “Cover” A Poem

I love a good cover song. Every middle school dance I went to ended with Whitney Houston singing Dolly Parton’s I Will Always Love You. So let’s do a “cover version” of a poem.

What if Dr. Seuss covered this poem?
What if Edgar Allen Poe did his own rendition?
What might Lewis Carroll’s version be like?

We have our high ceiling, folks! Now let’s lower the floor (more on that here).

Add The Scaffolding

Of course, if I give my students Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken and just say “Rewrite it like Dr. Seuss.” I’m going to get frustrated students and weak poetry. Students need structure to tackle a complex task. This is “lowering the floor” so that students can reach the “high ceiling.”

First, we’d want to define the style of Dr. Seuss. What makes Dr. Seuss so obviously Seuss-y?

And we want to get as specific as possible. Only then can students successfully mimic the style.

Seuss uses a da da dum rhythm. (This three syllable pattern is called an anapest. Yes I’d tell students that no matter their age.)
Each line has four da da dums. (Tetra = four, so that makes this rhythm anapest tetrameter.)
Seuss often rhymes AABB
He uses repetition and nonsense words.

More Scaffolding!

Then, of course, I need to actually test drive the task. In doing so, I realize that… it needs more scaffolding! I wasn’t quite sure how to get started.

So, we’ll make a word bank. Only its a collection of those anapests. This step will give students some go-to options to fill in their poem while maintaining the correct rhythm.

Using those rules, I can re-write the first stanza of The Road Not Taken in a Seuss-y style!

My Attempt

Frost’s Original	Seuss Remix
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;	In an old yellow wood where my path split in two, I was in such a pickle. Oh what should I do? Oh what should I do? I was there all alone. Gee I wish’d I could split! Gee I wish’d for a clone! I could not split in two. I was not made of goo. So I peered down the path ’til my eyes nearly blew.

See The Difference?

See how my original “paraphrase each line” task set such a dull restriction? “Re-write it like Dr. Seuss” is a much more interesting criteria.

Now, of course, some students are going to ask, “Can I do the whole poem?” And of course I’ll say, “You bet!”

In the end, we can tour the remixed poems. We can compare and contrast. Perhaps each student creates three awards with criteria of their choosing to hand out. You can see how easily this task can grow and grow. No one is going to say, “I’m done. What do I do now?“!

For Byrdseed.TV Members

Now, over at Byrdseed.TV I have several related tasks:

A whole “Write Like Dr. Seuss” project.
A writing exercise in which students write like Hemingway and Dickens.
A task in which students rewrite Edgar Allen Poe in Lewis Carroll’s style and vice versa.
A PD video for showing how to scaffold a task like this.