WalkaboutWalkabout
by James Vance Marshall
A Unit of Study
created by Carol Powles
Malvern Community School
http://www.malvern.k12.ia.us/
Introduction
The indigenous peoples of the world have a wealth of oral history. One way of relaying this history is through chants, songs, and verses that are sung during ceremonies. The young aborigine, while doing his "victory" dance, chanted a ceremonial song of his tribe.
There are certain common ceremonial songs that are played for our cultural occasions also - the wedding march, graduation processional and recessional, and our Happy Birthday song.
Our native American Indians also have similar ceremonial songs. This is where we want to go for this activity.
Note: With your teacher, please review your school's acceptable use policy for work on the Internet. Also, links to the web often change, so be sure to tell your teacher when you find a poor link or an error message as you work on this guide.
The Task: Free Verse
This is an individual activity, in which you will visit sites that contain native American Indian poetry. As you read some of the poems, develop a sense of their subject, their free style of writing, and their intent upon the reader. Then you will have the opportunity to write free verse poetry in similar style.
The Process: Exploring the Web, Creating a Product
1. Visit the following sites to read poetry from our native American Indians:
Native American Poetry On-Line
Sacred Mountains
The Desert
Rain
Leslie Marmon Silko
2. Read several of the free verse poems.
3. Write a free verse poem of your own with the following criteria:
the subject matter must deal with nature: Mother Earth, Father Sky, weather, common objects such as trees, clouds, sand, and so on.
needs to tell a story within the poem or express a feeling about the subject.
needs to be a minimum of 12 lines in length.
4. Edit and proofread your poem for mechanics, spelling, and basic grammar.
5. You may illustrate the poem if desired.
6. Hand your poems in so that they may be displayed on our bulletin board.
Evaluation
Free Verse Rubric
4 = Exemplary
poem is free verse style and contains sensory images
poem is of appropriate subject matter
poem is 12+ lines long
poem has no grammatical errors
3 = Accomplished
poem is free verse style and contains adequate sensory images
poem is of appropriate subject matter
poem is 10-12 lines long
poem has 1-2 grammatical errors
2 = Developing
poem is free verse style and contains few sensory images
poem is of appropriate subject matter
poem is 7-9 lines long
poem has 3-4 grammatical errors
1 = Beginning
poem is free verse style but has no sensory images
poem is of appropriate subject matter
poem is less than 7 lines long
poem has 5+ grammatical errors
0 = did not do activity