Pl

Lesson Plan
Teach
er
Name

Whitney Lammi

Date Tuesday,
September 13,
2016

Subje
ct
Area

ELA

Gra
de

10-2

Topic

Form tentative understandings,

interpretations and positions,
Develop content

Tim
e

70 minutes

Materials
What resources
will you need?

Introduction (10
min)

Spoken Word Poems (YouTube videos and

printed lyrics): Shoulders Shane Koyczan &
Changing the World, One word at a Time Belissa Escobedo, Zariya Allen and Rhiannon
McGavin
Teacher analysis of each of the poems
How To: Spoken Word (write it on the board)

Good Morning Everyone! How is everyone

feeling today?
Take Attendance
GOALS CHAT / KWL Charts
- Now that we know how to analyze a poem, I am
going to hand out the lyrics to a spoken word poem
and a slam poem we are going to listen to. Spoken
word and Slam poems are meant to be read aloud to
an audience. These are passionate poems about
something the poet feels as though needs to be
commented on. These things are more often than not
about things that are wrong with society and the
poets are speaking out for change. They are eyeopener poems. But these poems can be personal
battles as well there have been slam/spoken word
poems about individual battles with the type of job
you have, sexual preferences, gender identity, eating
disorders, bullying, etc.

Body
Activity 1 (20
min)

Body Activity 2
(20 min)
Closure (20 min)

Background info on Spoken Word Poetry

Author info on Shane Koyczan
I am going to play Shoulders for the class first.
After we watch it, I will put the lyrics up on the
board and show them an example of how I
would annotate the poem. After I give them a
brief example, I want them to go ahead and try
doing it on their own. I will suggest that they
write in different colors for the different types of
things they are looking for, but I typically only
write in pen, so I will allow them to choose to
annotate how they feel comfortable.
After students have a chance to annotate their
own poems, I want them to discuss with the
people at their table what they were able to
come up with, and then we will share as a class.
We will scroll through the lyrics on the board
and students will share what they came up with
per table group.
Next, I will play Changing the World, One word
at a Time. We will follow the exact same
process as we did with the previous poem.
Background info on Slam Poetry
Author info on Belissa Escobedo, Zariya Allen
and Rhiannon McGavin
Students will have the remainder of class to
experiment with spoken/slam poetry.