Engaging Students Through Poetry Video Projects

In today’s short episode of “Highly Recommended”, I’m here to tell you it’s time to try a poetry video project! Harness students’ excitement over the creator economy and the survival of TikTok and get them interpreting poetry through a medium that only keeps getting MORE relevant to communication today. 

First things first, let’s talk mentor texts. There are some VERY cool poetry videos online that take their interpretation in wildly different directions. I suggest taking a look at Amanda Gorman’s “Earthrise,” Ada Limón’s “A Poem for Europa,” and Rudy Francisco’s “Complainers,” which I’ll link for you in the show notes. As students watch, have them sketchnote ideas for CRAFT moves. What do they notice about the combination of talking head shots vs. B-Roll? Is their background music? How did the producer make cuts and transitions? How does the video bring out the meaning of the poem? How about the audio?

Once students have started to warm up to this idea of interpreting poems through video, it’s time for them to choose a poem of their own to interpret. Now you could easily make this a project to help them dig deep into a famous poem of their choice, OR you could let them record and create around an original piece of their own, depending on your goals. They should print up a script of their poem which they can annotate with ideas for visuals and how they will want to read the poem aloud. Parallel to their written script, they’ll want to do some storyboarding, sketching out the order of their film clip videos.

Now there are two free platforms I’d recommend for this project. Vocaroo, which we’ve discussed many times, is perfect for recording the audio easily and snagging the MP3 file. Then they can upload it to Canva, which will allow them to combine photos, videos, and audio of their own with photos, videos, and audio available on Canva. This is the most technical part of the project, so I’ve made you a little tutorial video for how to put together a video in Canva (which I’ll link in the show notes). While there will be a learning curve on learning to put together a video, it’s a learning curve well worth trekking. This would be a great starter project leading toward video options on future choice boards, documentary projects, PSA projects, and other types of video projects in your class or department arc. 

Inside Canva, your students will be able to sequence text slides, video clips, and photos to create a visual sequence that represents their interpretation of the poem, and overlay it with their audio recording of their script. They can even add music at a low level behind their voice in different sections if they wish. 

If you’ve been waiting for the right moment to get your feet wet with video, let this be your sign that YOU CAN DO IT! It’s OK to launch a project without total confidence in the tech. Your students may just know a lot about this and be able to help each other and you, and there are not many tech problems out there that a quick tutorial search on YouTube won’t fix. I’ve seen some wonderful student work from the poetry video project, and so can you! 

Links Mentioned:

"Earthrise," by Amanda Gorman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwOvBv8RLmo

"Complainers," by Rudy Francisco: https://youtu.be/nrh1JlP8R2E?si=8BvEmi0mIr8NCAEJ 

"A Poem for Europa," by Ada Limón: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgWbeDNPD6o

How to Create a Video in Canva: https://sparkcreativity.kartra.com/videopage/createavideo 

Go Further: 

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