Sample Lesson Plan Critique- A Bear of a Poem: Composing and Performing Found Poetry

   The author of this lesson, Carolyn Wilhelm uses found poetry to incorporate ELA standards into her classroom. I'd never heard of the concept of found poetry until I reviewed this lesson plan; it is an intriguing idea. I love the interactive writing part of it but find other components of the lesson to be unsuitable for K-2 classrooms.
   The idea of a found poem, reframing words and phrases from other sources as poetry, is a great way to help our students engage in writing. I love that the lesson is student-centered and enables the children to express their creativity. Ms. Wilhelm's planning page is also cleverly created; it is a great guide for her students. I also like the way the she plans to have her class present their found poem by having each student read aloud and inviting an outside audience.

   Although this lesson plan sounds great in theory, I'm having a hard time picturing this done in K-2 classrooms. There are many children in each class, and creating a poem in which every student contributes one line can get confusing and incomprehensible. Perhaps this lesson can be adapted to simplify matters for our young K-2 learners. One idea is to divide the class into groups and have each group create a found poem together, another is to have each group contribute two lines to the class poem.  As the groups are working together, the instructor can spend a few minutes at each table guiding the students as they work.
  I believe this lesson would also be a valuable resource in older grades. Third or fourth grade students may have the more sophisticated skills and comprehension needed to collaboratively create a found poem.