Our #edu407 class has gotten busy crafting documentary poetry. As we study disciplinary #literacies this lesson gave us the chance to look at connections between history and Language Arts.
If you want to get involved we added lesson plans and examples to our class wiki
I wrote mine today about the Strawberry Moon (the first full moon in June). My origninal idea I wanted to have a young First Nations child on the shores of Maine lambasting the fall of their people....75%-90% of Alogonquin (a language group on many First Nations) gout wiped by Small Pox alone.
Yet the more research I conducted the more resilience I saw in a people's fighting for their cultural survival. Did you know citizens of Canada can, and do enlist in US Armed Forces? That into the 1970s parents of "mixed race" children would abandon their kids on resevrations in Canada into the 1970s? That the Wabanaki Confederacy, who fought along side settleres and colonists reformed in 1993?
So much history.
The first poem I wrote focused on the rebirth of the Wabanaki Council. I set out in the tradition of documentary poetry to cast light into darkness but the more I learned the more I got moved. The more I get moved the more my poetry gets affected.
In the second poem I responded to Kevin's poem about having different names for the moon. Many cultures have names for the first full month in June but in the US most of of our lore traces back to Native roots. So I wrote a poem called Lost Words.
It took a bit of research to write these. I list my sources below:
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