Today, we did a wild revision experiment in both the 5th and 8th grade classes at Clinton Elementary. The students each chose a poem from the year that they were interested in continuing to do more work on. They wrote down 5-6 of their favorite short phrases on little slips of paper. They then glued the little strips onto a new sheet of paper and wrote a new poem around it. The students pointed out that this related to the dada poems that we wrote earlier this year–how it introduced an element of randomness into their work. Some students said that this freed them up, and they found themselves writing new and surprising things. Some students said it helped create a new structure that focused on the most important parts of the poem. Some students said it was uncomfortable to give up that much control in the poem! Many of the students decided to use this new version as a basis for their final revision. Overall, it was a fun and strange day of writing poetry.
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