Montana History and Poetry, Part 2

 April is National Poetry Month! Last week I focused on reading poetry. Below are a few lessons that ask students to write poetry as a way of better understanding Montana history. I'll list them in grade level order (elementary first).

Painting to Poetry

An Artist’s Journey: Transform a Painting into Poetry (designed for grades 1–7) asks students to examine several Charlie Russell paintings using their five senses, before choosing one painting to use as an inspiration for a poem. One good adaptation of this for younger grades: Have your students pretend to "step into the painting" by taking a giant step forward before imagining what sounds they hear, what they smell, etc. We designed this activity around Russell's artwork, but you could do this with other artwork or even an evocative photograph.

Biographical Poems

Biographical Poems Celebrating Amazing Montana Women Lesson Plan (designed for grades 4-6) asks students to research a Montana woman and then use the information they gather to create biographical poems. We included a variation of this lesson in Unit 4 of the Montana: A History of Our Home curriculum, in which we ask students to write poems about any notable Montanan. (See Unit 4, Part 4, p. 221 of the Teachers Guide or p. 34 of the online PDF). 

Found Poems

A few years back, retired Helena teacher Jim Schulz suggested having students write found poems as a way to get them to analyze and summarize information. He suggested giving students an analysis question and a relatively short section of their textbook and the assignment to answer the question by writing a poem using only phrases from that section of the textbook. The first part of this post is a sample assignment I created, having students write found poems about allotment using pages of our middle-school textbook Montana: Stories of the Land.

I've also talked to retired librarian Ruth Ferris about asking students to create found poems from historic newspaper articles or other primary sources. The glory of found poetry is that it forces students to read their source text more than once, so make sure the text you provide is worthy of re-reading. 

Dialogue Poems

Poems for Two Voices (designed for grades seven through twelve) asks students to work in pairs to create a poem for two voices, comparing and contrasting the tribal leaders' perspectives. This lesson focuses on analyze Plenty Coups and one by Sitting Bull, but you could use other figures, for example, a member of the radical Industrial Workers of the World and a more conservative member of the Butte Miner's Union. The trick is to make sure the students research and really understand the different perspectives before writing their poems. Here's more information on dialogue poems and some additional examples of how Montana teachers have used them in their classrooms.