Wednesday, January 18, 2023

Freebie: Black Out Poetry

Here's a quick warm up activity that you can use for a poetry unit or in creative writing or just for some fun.


(link)

This is a simple and fun exercise to get students going.  You need a book you don't mind destroying and enough black markers for every student.  Cut pages from the book.  I prefer to cut the pages in front of the students because it is a weird feeling for them to see a book defaced in an English class by the teacher.

Tell them we are going to take the Michelangelo approach to poetry.


The poem is in that page.  They just have to find it and mark out all the words that do not belong in the poem.  The presentation has several examples (all from other sources linked in the presentation notes), but here is one for you to check out:


If you are a creative writer teacher, you may even want to get fancier with it and have the blacking out done in colors and decorative.

The presentation is here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1xyWe-eXVQsZyl88S38VF8Q9iUyxcKvQCTfqBJMa2Tn8/edit#slide=id.g1c7b2d684c0_0_12

If you want to make use of it, be my guest.  If you want to make changes, just make a copy of it first and then it is all yours.  If you get a really good one from a student, I would love it if you snapped a picture of it and sent it to me at extremeenglishteacher@gmail.com!

No comments:

Post a Comment