A lesson in Editing poetry

Just Edit:
Exercise in Editing Poems

Objective: Students will practice editing a poem

Procedure:
-Discuss with students general suggestions for good poetry. This would include the following suggestions:
-Rhyming is not always good, especially if it traps you into writing something that doesn’t really fit the poem
-Use words that make sense in our current language
-Be sure that the words included in the poem have a purpose. Avoid the use of lots of “fluffy” words.
-Notice the line breaks. Do they happen in places that make sense, or do they seem awkward?

Before we practice this with our own poems, let us practice this with a poem that doesn’t belong to anyone in our class. Read the poem “The Great Cosmic Birthday Bash”. Pay attention to what the poem says to you. Thinking about the suggestions for a good poem, highlight and underline parts of this poem that you feel could use some work. Students can work together in groups to identify weak areas of the poem.

After students have identified parts of the poem that do not make sense or need additional work, ask students to rework the poem, changing words or rewriting lines if necessary to improve it. Students do this independently at first. This may need to be done as a homework assignment to give students ample time to rework the poem.

Students come back together in groups and share what they’ve written. Each group then selects one poem to read aloud to the entire class from each group. As a large group, invite the class to make general suggestions comparing and contrasting the original poem with the poems written by the students.

This lesson will prepare students for the task of examining the work of their peers and providing feedback in future lessons.

The Great Cosmic Birthday Bash
by Brennan
Today is my birthday, the day of my birth,
The day when my soul reunited with Earth.
It flew through the galaxy, past Jupiter and Mars.
It passed a few asteroids and millions of stars.
Coming from Heaven as it surely has done,
It shot past some angels all aglow in the sun.
And now it is home in my innermost child,
Which is why on my birthday I danced and I smiled.
Poem courtesy of: http://home.swbell.net/moonshad/poetry.html