Teachtopia teaches POETRY

Found Poetry

Found Poetry is much more than just another genre of poetry. Found Poetry is a way for students to dissect and comprehend text.

A found poem is shaped from a collection of words or phrases found in a reading (text).   A found poem may be created by students after reading a textbook chapter, newspaper story, or any type of text (including primary sources) that may lead itself to analysis or review.

The example below shows a found poem created from an internet article about how robots will replace humans for many jobs.

There are no set rules on how to do found poetry *, but here are some guidelines we developed at Teachtopia:

1. Students select no more than 15 interesting words or short phrases from a text.  This text might be a newspaper article, a story on the internet, or a few pages from a social studies or science textbook.

2. After selecting the words, students then arrange the words/phrases as Poetry. They try to create some meaning related to what the original text is about.

3. Students may add up to 15 additional words to add meaning to their “found poem”.

4. Students then create a title for their poem.

This activity enables the class (or an individual) to be introduced to or return to a reading to focus on its ideas, meaning, and language.

*While there are often tremendous freedoms granted to young writers, it is important to develop some consistent guidelines for their writing.  This should not be seen as a restraint, but rather as a catalyst to both get them working and also provide a level of scaffolding.

Additional Suggestions:

• Photocopies of original text allows the writer to cut out the “found” words and glue them on their writing paper.
• Students will need the process of creating a found poem modeled for them.
• Social Studies and Science textbooks create excellent found poetry.  Challenging and or dry subject matter could “come alive” via this form of poetry.

Standards Correlation:

Social Studies:

Varying CDE content standards are addressed depending on the focus of the reading(s) being used to create the poem.

ELA:

CCSS.ELA­Literacy.RI.3.2: Determine the main idea of a text; recount the key details and explain how they support the main idea.

 CCSS.ELA­Literacy.RI.3.10: By the end of the year, read and comprehend informational texts, including history/social studies, science, and technical texts, at the high end of the grades 2–3 text complexity band independently and proficiently. 

CCSS.ELA­Literacy.SL.3.5 Create engaging audio recordings of stories or poems that demonstrate fluid reading at an understandable pace; add visual displays when appropriate to emphasize or enhance certain facts or details. 

CCSS.ELA­Literacy.CCRA.SL.5 Make strategic use of digital media and visual displays of data to express information and enhance understanding of presentations.