Starry Night

Starry Night by Van Gogh

This week I continued my exploration of inquiry based teaching in my Year 7 English classes. We are currently working on a poetry unit and I thought that this provided a great opportunity to put into practice what I had learnt from MoMA. As it turned out, there was much more to it than just a beautiful piece of art.

I started the week with the simple inquiry question: “What is poetry?” They were mostly silent to begin with but once people started mentioning types of poems, the names of poems and poets started flowing. It was also interesting to see the technical language they used such as rhyme because it gave me a good insight into how much work will be required to teach them analysis skills. This tied in well with the course I have been doing on differentiation and it was pleasing to see the two ideas intersect.

I then followed this mind mapping activity up with a hands-on poetry experience. One of my fears when I teach poetry is that students think poetry is either incomprehensible garbage or just a laundry list of technical terms applied to words, lines and stanzas. I remember at school how much fun I had discovering poetry through the work of William Carlos Williams and I wanted them to know that poetry is accessible and fun. So, with a pen in hand, we headed out to the school oval with a 5 senses scaffold (created from a 5 sense picture of Google images). My idea was simple: experience the oval and write a poem about it. After a few brief instructions, with most students ignoring my pleading to “please do this activity by yourself”, I had them touching and eating grass, sniffing the breeze, examining the various items left on the oval and gazing upwards at the sky. We then headed over to some tables and wrote. Unsurprisingly, many of them chose to write acrostic poems but I told myself that next time I would push them to write something more ‘proper’ because I didn’t want to be too restrictive this early on.

The next day, having already successfully written one poem, I decided to try the activity again but using Van Gogh’s Starry Night painting. I got the idea from the MoMA education page using their theme based categories. Not only was the painting visually appealing, particularly the way the stars are portrayed, but it captured a wonder I hoped would inspire the kids. Moreover, I decided to team teach the lesson with my colleague as we both had reduced classes due to a school activity.

Using the same 5 sense scaffold, together we elicited responses to the painting. Using that great question of “what else do you see?” we were able to generate an extensive list of items and feelings. I was really impressed by the way the students could see different interpretations in the painting, such as the hills being a tsunami or wave, and the interactions the painting generated as students were keen to share their ideas. In fact, they were so keen to share that we had to remind them to share with the class rather than just blurt out answers to their friends. Next we got them to write a 7 to 10 line poem about Starry Night.

I was amazed!

The quality of the work they produced was out of this world – and only 1 or 2 acrostic poems in sight. From poems about drowning to trips down some filled alleys, the students were able to use the 5 senses to create moving poems as diverse as the class itself. Moreover, everyone was able to complete the task and I didn’t hear a single complaint about poetry being boring or too difficult. I especially loved being able to share some of the poems with the class as both of us teachers discussed how our childhood memories effected our own poems. The highlight though for me was the work of a Chinese student who is just learning English and the wonderfully natural way he crafts his poems. He often asks for help because he sees himself as weak in English but every poem of his I read amazes me with its grace.

Thus, inquiry based learning once again came up with the unexpected and rewarding. The painting and activities is definitely something I will reuse plus this way of getting the students to write poetry is really effective. Rather than complaints about poems being too boring or difficult, artwork allows them to express what they see in the work and how they interpret the world. The results so far have been wonderful and I have the pleasure of putting their poems together in a book for the class. Just like the glistening, golden stars in the painting, my students really showed me how they shined.