Presenter: _________ Andy Peters _____________________________________________

Date: ___________5/17/16_____________

BEST LESSON PRESENTATION FORM

Title of the Unit:
Course Name:
Reading and Writing from the Borderlands:
Creative Writing (Prose/Poetry)
Experimental Forms
DESCRIBE THIS LESSON AND WHERE IT FITS WITHIN THE UNIT
(What preceded this lesson, what follows? Why this lesson now?)

Grade(s):
10-12

This lesson took place on the second day of the Experimental Forms unit of my Creative Writing classthe
one unit of the course that is focused on poetry rather than prose. The unit (which is of my mentor teachers
design) borrows a page from the Humanities Literature book by focusing on various forms of experimental
poetryflarf, memes, erasure, ekphrastic, communal, and homophonic translationto explore how poetry
can be used to push back against boundaries created by dominant ideologies and institutions. Traditional
notions of authorship and legitimacy are constantly being questioned and subverted here; our discussions
largely focus on elements of remix culture and what it means to be original in the postmodern age, as well
as how the state of technology and the internet influences how we communicate and express ourselves.
This particularly lesson was placed early in the unit primarily because it guides students to explore issues of
authorship and audience from a slightly different angle from that of the lesson on flarf poetry, which directly
preceded it; these lessons complement each other in serving as a hook for the unit that piques students
interest and gets them immediately engaged in doing creative work around the issues were talking about.
The lesson after this lesson concerns erasure poetry, which takes the ideas of authorship and remix culture
discussed above even further by asking students to create new poems out of previously existing works by
scratching out, erasing, or painting over (to name just a few methods) their words.
WHY DID YOU SELECT THIS LESSON TO PRESENT?
I selected this lesson because I think it can be applied to a wide variety of contexts as an immediately
accessible way of teaching students about rhetorical issues of genre, audience, purpose, and medium. It works
well as a poetry lesson that pushes the boundaries of what we generally think of what we think about poetry,
but it can certainly be adapted to suit other purposes. On top of that, I simply find it unusual, engaging, and
creative, and it went over very well with my students. While not all of my students were familiar with all of
the memes we discussed, they were at least familiar enough to engage with the concepts raised in our
discussions and in the lecture, and I had some great participation from students who I rarely hear from at all.
IDENTIFY THE COMMON CORE STANDARDS AND STUDENT LEARNING OBJECTIVES THIS LESSON
ADDRESSES
CCSS:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.11-12.3
Apply knowledge of language to understand how language functions in different contexts, to make effective
choices for meaning or style, and to comprehend more fully when reading or listening.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.11-12.6
Determine an authors point of view or purpose in a text in which the rhetoric is particularly effective,
analyzing how style and content contribute to the power, persuasiveness or beauty of the text.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.11-12.4
Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task,
purpose, and audience.
Student Learning Objective:
Understand issues of authorship, audience, and medium with regard to the creation and distribution of
memes.

Presenter: _________ Andy Peters _____________________________________________

WHAT THINKING SKILLS ARE DEVELOPED INTHIS LESSON?

Date: ___________5/17/16_____________

Skills associated with critical literacy, textual power (as described below), and visual rhetoric. Students are
asked to defamiliarize and deconstruct texts that they see (and quickly dismiss) every day as a way of
interrogating how language and images work together in socially constructed ways in order to convey
complex meaning, as well as the how technology impacts modern communication and expression (especially
in terms of authorship and distribution of texts).
WHY IS THIS A BEST PRACTICE LESSON? (research citation)
Scholes, R. (1995). An overview of Pacesetter English. The English Journal, 84(1), 69-70. Retrieved from
https://www.jstor.org/stable/820479
Poems, plays, stories, letters, essays, interviews, books, magazines, newspapers, movies, television shows,
yes, even tax forms, are all different kinds of texts. What the course aims at, then, is to increase the textual
power of the students who take it: to help them learn how to read in the fullest sense of that word. Reading, in
this sense of the word, means being able to place or situate a text, to understand it from the inside,
sympathetically, and to step away from it and see it from the outside, critically. It means being able to see a
text for what it is and to ask, also, how it connectsor fails to connectto the life and times of the reader.
This is textual power, but textual power does not stop there; it also includes the ability to respond, to talk
back, to write back, to analyze, to extend, to take ones own textual position in relation to Shakespeareor to
any kind of text Textual power involves the ability to play many rolesand to know that one is playing
themas well as the ability to generate new texts, to make something that did not exist before somebody
made it.
WHAT ARE THE STEPS OF THIS LESSON? (be specific)

Poetry Notebook #2 (work time and discussion)

o Students work individually to answer the questions provided on the slides in their Poetry
Notebooks.
o Teacher facilitates whole-class discussion of the Poetry Notebook prompts. All students
share their favorite memes , and volunteers answer prompt questions as well as additional
probing questions.
Probing questions: What allows you to understand the meaning of your favorite
meme or of each of these images to the left? How do words work with these memes?
What happens when someone uses the wrong words with a particular meme, i.e. a
caption that doesnt suit the picture? Why? How do you know?
Mini-Lecture: Not Sure if Meme, or Poetry: What are Memes? How Do Memes Work?
o CFUs and probing questions: show students meme text without image and ask them
whether it makes sense (and ask them to explain why it doesnt make sense); ask students
how many memes they see in a given day/week/month in order to help them see how the
ubiquity of memes leads to the social construction of their meanings via shared codes
Visual Thinking Strategies: The Kermit Sipping Tea Meme
o Students discuss the meme and the questions provided in pairs (paired off by teacher)
o Teacher facilitates whole-class discussion (similar to discussion of Poetry Notebook); each
pair is held accountable for contributing at least one detail/insight/observation
(in an ideal world) Read and discuss Goldsmiths New Yorker article, The Writer as Meme Machine [I
was not actually able to do this, but it is an interesting article that interrogates, among other things,
how reading and writing have fundamentally changed in the internet age]

AMOUNT OF TIME ALLOCATED FOR THIS LESSON: approximately 50-55 minutes (the class period was 72
minutes, but we spent the first part of class discussing the flarf poems students had written for homework)

Presenter: _________ Andy Peters _____________________________________________

Date: ___________5/17/16_____________
WHAT ASSESSMENTS WILL BE USED TO INDICATE WHAT STUDENTS HAVE LEARNED AND HOW WELL?
Formative:
Discussion of Poetry Notebook #2
Small-group and whole-class discussion of Kermit Sipping Tea meme
Homework assignment: Creating a meme
Summative:
Poetry Notebook
Commonplace Book
HOW IS THIS LESSON ADJUSTED FOR FOCAL STUDENTS? (DIFFERENTIATION)
What do you need to consider about your learners in order to plan and implement this lesson? (Think of your focal
students)

It is helpful to know about students access to technology at home, not only because it may impact
their ability to go home and create a meme for homework, but also because it may influence their
exposure to memes and the prior knowledge they will have on the subject.
Students can be strategically paired/grouped up for the meme analysis part of the lesson; I
differentiated the groupings on the fly (I have a very small class) based on typical levels of
engagement and understanding of course material. For instance, I paired a student who is almost
always checked out and looking at his phone with a student who is very vocal, and then I walked
around the room listening to and engaging with each group as they had their discussions in order to
ensure that they were on task.
WHAT MATERIALS ARE NEEDED FOR THIS LESSON?
Google Slides presentation
Various memes to read and analyze
New Yorker article: Goldsmith, The Writer as Meme Machine
WHAT OTHER RESOURCES ARE NEEDED FOR THIS LESSON? (handouts, props, technology)
Attach copies of the handouts, describe the props, identify technology needed and/or web links or other resources
required for this lesson.
Projector for Google Slides presentation
Meme generator website (i.e. https://imgflip.com/memegenerator)
CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT CONSIDERATIONS (ROOM SET-UP -attach a drawing of the room set-up if it varies
from traditional classroom set-up), TRANSITIONS, DISTRIBUTION OF RESOURCES, CONFIGURATION OF ROOM
AND SIZE

Nothing unusual is necessary in terms of room set-up.

Transitions should go smoothly because each component builds on the last; the mini-lecture makes
concrete the issues raised in the Poetry Notebook discussion, and the meme analysis gives students a
chance to apply ideas from the mini-lecture.
Very few resources to be distributed. When students brought the memes they created to class the next
day, I gave them the option to print out a copy or to simply access it on their devices. I also had
students e-mail me their memes so that I could display them on the projector.