Finding Geography Using Found Poetry

Functional literacy is important in both English/language arts and geography. Using the "found poetry" strategy, students will summarize a piece of text, identify main ideas and find geographic connections. While using young adult literature is a great way to incorporate geography into English/language arts classroom, understanding of geography and geographic themes may be better demonstrated by analyzing and interpreting nonfiction. By using nonfiction readings to supplement the textbook in the secondary geography classroom, the teachers not only encourage the growth of geographic skills but many English/language arts skills as well. Exposure to quality, creative, nonfiction writing expands students' understandings of cultures and in turn, helps dispel myths and stereotypes. Newspapers, magazines, and radio/Internet news sources make for great reading and are wonderful ways to incorporate current events into the classroom. This article presents a lesson which is a geography adaptation of "Found and Headline Poetry." Using quality, short, non-fiction readings, students expand their knowledge and understanding of geographic concepts to create unique poems using quotes from the article. Greater interaction with an article may help struggling readers to establish language fluency and increase understanding of key geographic vocabulary. This lesson is designed for the grades 6-12 geography/social studies and English/language arts classroom.