Blackout Poetry is one of those lessons that I’ve always been intrigued by, but I’ve never tried it. I have some pretty cool classes this year and decided to give it a try. I must say, I really enjoyed this lesson. We began this as a sort of introduction to a Unit on Words and Art. Following this lesson, students created Altered Books (blog post on that to follow later on)!
I introduced my classes to the idea of Words and Art and we discussed how words can be used to further get the point across. I showed them examples of both Blackout Poetry and Blackout Poetry with Illustrations. They were required to create a poem or phrase of their choice and then come up with an illustration that fit their idea.
We incorporated a few different concepts into this including:
Emphasis: How can you emphasize your poem and make it stand out from the rest of the words? How can you emphasize your illustration?
Movement: Is your poem easy to read or is it jumbled and somewhat confusing?
Contrast: Is there a strong contrast between your illustrations and words versus the actual page of the book?
I would love to hear some other examples and perhaps how this lesson has been taken a step further! Like I said, I used this as an introduction to a Unit on Words and Art. I am very pleased with these results!
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