In one my previous posts, I mentioned how I integrate literary arts in the form of erasure poem in my both English and Turkish classrooms. Now that we have an idea of found poetry, erasure and blackout poems, I will introduce you to a new online tool “Blackout Poetry Maker“.
3 sample texts are available on the website to work on. We can also paste the text of our own choice on the box given. After that, we select the words that we want to keep. Then, click “black out.” We can save our poem as an image with a click on “Render Square”.
We can ask our students to create their black out poems to practice the target language by considering some grammar objectives. We can ask them to have some specific structures learned in class such as Relative Clauses, Noun Clauses and Passive Voice. This activity also gives them the chance to practice vocabulary (word formation, collacations, adjectives and adverbs etc.) in a creative way.
Let me remind you the steps we follow while creating our blackout poems:
Austin Kleon Blackout Poems
At the prelistening stage of the lesson, we went on with learning new vocabulary for the lecture they would listen. After listening to the political science lecture on the increasing use of surveillance systems in the world, they answered the follow-up questions by using the notes they took at the time of listening.
I’m sharing some photos to illustrate the work produced on the classroom wall at the end of the lesson. Commenting on their friends’ responses on the post-its, they seemed to be enjoying the process.
We can either introduce it in class and ask our students to write their acrostic poems as homework and bring the hardcopy to the class or have them write their poems in class and share with us. At the end of the process, sharing poems in class would give us the opportunity to get to know our students with more details while they realize their creative potential within themselves.
er of students in your class.
Twyla Tharp in her book 
