(Virtual) Poetry Slam

Poetry slams are bringing poetry to life across the country. In the tradition of coffeehouse readings from the beatnik era, these "open mic" live performances allow student poets to bring their poetry to live audiences. By taking poetry off the page and into the three-dimensional world of performance, the passion and intensity of poetry become a profound experience for both poet and audience.

In this project, students create a "virtual poetry slam." This project can easily be implemented in any classroom situation at any grade level where students have created short pieces of personal writing. Students write, edit, and revise a short piece of poetry or personal writing. Students can act as peer editors to help others in the initial writing and revision process. Before rehearsing, the teacher reviews with the class basic rules of oral presentation including voice modulation, eye contact, and control of fidgeting. After rehearsing, students are videotaped performing their work. These videos are then edited in iMovie where titles, atmospheric music, and virtual applause are added. The movies can be exported to iDVD for final assembly and burning on a DVD, if desired.

By adding a performance element to an activity involving writing, students address additional language arts standards such as oral speaking skills.

After completing this project, students will be able to:

• Demonstrate mastery of basic poetry conventions.
• Demonstrate mastery of basic oral speech skills.

After completing this project, students will be able to:

• Use a digital video camera to record a performance.
• Use iMovie for video editing.
• Use iDVD to design and produce a DVD (optional).

• Standards-based rubrics can be used to assess the use of appropriate elements of poetry (rhetorical devices, meter, imagery, and so on) and to assess oral and speaking skills (voice control, emphatic reading, eye contact, control of fidgeting).
• The iMovie project or DVD can be included in students' portfolios as examples of their work.

Macintosh computer with a SuperDrive (SuperDrive optional), digital video camera, portable microphone (optional), iMovie, and iDVD (optional)

Each student produces a piece to contribute and performs the piece while being videotaped. Students can also be organized into production teams assigned to tasks such as video production (lights, camera, stage assistant, and so on), video editing, DVD production, and acting as members of the “virtual audience” for audience shots.

• A relaxation tip is to tell students that they will be filmed three times from three different angles. Thus, they don’t have to get upset if they make a mistake because the video editors can simply “take the line” from one of the other takes. This technique also makes it easy to create a multiple camera shoot appearance, adding to the professional look of the finished video.
• Fades to and from black can be used to simulate stage lights coming up and going down as is common in live readings. This also provides some “tape space” for the applause and sound clips so that they don’t drown out the actual performance.
• Extracting the audio from the video makes it possible to “cut away” to audience reaction shots. This enhances the “virtual reality” and allows for editing out focus blurs, camera wobbles, and other visual blips that occasionally detract from an otherwise good take.
• Several of the templates in iDVD allow you to add a soundtrack background. One technique is to have a few seconds of the same audio file fading out at the beginning of each student’s video and fading in at the end. A similar “simulation” can be created by fading applause in and out at each end of the videos.