Chapters International

Overview:

Poetry is a structure that promotes inquiry, agency, interpretation, and liberation. Layering poetry into content areas and nonfiction literacy units of study is a great way to invite your students to explore, question, and bring their whole selves into appreciating the natural and human world around them. Poetry is an accessible scaffold to build one’s schema on a topic, promote a scientific inquiry stance, and synthesize the big ideas in research. Ultimately, it invites students to use their expository research writing as an effective force for social justice and change. In each session, we will collaborate to gather resources, texts, and ideas to build schema, inspire inquiry, incite activism, and synthesize information for participants’ content area standards. Throughout the course, participants will be encouraged to choose a content area standard or unit to focus on. Action steps will be suggested so that participants can use this course to design lessons and curate resources to support the existing curriculum with poetry.

COURSE OBJECTIVES:

Explore the research on poetic inquiry and transcription to discover how poetry can serve as the seeds of exploration in content area studies.
Discuss how learning to read poetry supports the interpretation and critical thinking strategies one needs to read informational texts effectively.
Learn how poetry can be used as, in, and for inquiry when researching and writing in the content areas.
Unpack how to intentionally layer poems into text sets to provide additional information, differing points of view, critical lenses, and to explore concepts and topics in-depth.
Highlight #ownvoices poets in the content areas so students can be proud of their racial history and develop the strength to challenge patterns that hold their voices back.
Create digital bins that integrate diverse media and formats into content area standards.

Session 1:

This session will review the research on poetic inquiry and poetic transcription to demonstrate how scientists use poetry to enhance understanding and shift the reader’s stance from remembering information or facts, to experiencing events and connecting with people. Examples of the practical applications and suggestions for implementing this research in K-6 classrooms will be shared.

Session 2:

This session will focus on layering poetry in the social studies content area. We will study how poetry creates space for conversations about critical awareness and social justice concerning people, places, identities, government, and civic practices. Classroom case studies and examples will be shared. There will be time dedicated to participants exploring poetry to support the social studies standards.

Session 3:

This session will focus on layering poetry in the science content area. Poetry can offer a way for scientists to play with language, to reframe concepts, and to engage with aesthetics to capture readers in ways that are not possible with traditional informational structures. We will study the research that shows how when poetry is integrated with core content, students are more engaged rather than being passive recipients of knowledge or information and assist with digesting and learning complex topics. There will be time dedicated to participants exploring poetry to support the science standards.

Session 4:

Throughout the course, participants will be encouraged to choose a content area standard or unit to focus on. Action steps will be suggested so that participants can use the time in the course to design curriculum and curate resources purposeful to their work. The final session will be dedicated to co-creating a protocol that can be used with colleagues to design additional units of study for other content area standards and individual conferring and small group support for each participant with the instructor.

CLARE LANDRIGAN

Clare Landrigan is an international staff developer and author who is still a teacher at heart. After years of serving as an educator and administrator in elementary public schools, she is now a literacy consultant, spending her days partnering with school systems to implement best practices in the field of literacy. She believes that effective professional development includes side-by-side teaching, analysis of student work, mutual trust, respect, and a good dose of laughter. Clare is the co-author of It’s All About the Books: How to Create Bookrooms and Classroom Libraries That Inspire Readers and Assessment in Perspective: Focusing on the Reader Behind the Numbers. She blogs about books and the art of teaching on her website, www.clarelandrigan.com, and is co-authoring a book, The Possibilities of Poetry, with Aeriale Johnson, to be published by Stenhouse in 2024.