Reflection Essay: Audience 3 Ways

Students are assigned 2 consecutive poems to read, annotate, and perform for the class.

Annotations can include:
-vocabulary words & definitions
-repetitions
-variations
-important people and places
-metaphors
-images
-rhetorical figures
-“ungrammatical” poetic structures
-narrative turns
-change in tense
-historical references

Students submit annotations for credit, then free write about their experience reading their poems and annotating. What was it like to try to find important passages to highlight and explain? What was it like reading to themselves, perhaps multiple times?

Students perform their assigned poems for the class. They must be fluid, rehearsed, and well delivered.

Students then share their annotations (classmates may copy them in their books) and explain their notes. (5-7 minutes each)

After their performances, students free write about the experience of listening to poetry read aloud. What did they remember? What was easy or hard to understand? What was pleasurable or not?

Using their 2 previous free writes, students draft their final essay, reflecting on their 3 experiences as poetry’s audience: silent reader and annotator; listener; performer. Students focus on comparing/contrasting, providing narrative, detail, and reflection.

Feedback can focus on organization, essay structure, paragraph cohesion, and MLA formatting.

Using feedback, students revise their essays either in class or for homework.

Students submit their final, revised, and polished essay.