POETS and the Power of Progression
A tri-BOB that helps students move from appreciating poetry to embodying it
In a world that often rushes past reflection, poetry slows us down to listen: to language, to others, and to ourselves. The POETS Building Outside the Blocks (BOB) project brings the essence of a BOB approach to learning to life: building from the inside out. Through this tri-BOB, students don’t just study poetry; they inhabit it, finding their voice and using it to make meaning.
Why Poetry?
Poetry offers students a powerful entry point into language, emotion, and perspective. It helps them connect with others and themselves. The POETS BOB was designed to help learners move from appreciating poetry to embodying it, developing interpretive and expressive skills along the way.
To build schema, students encounter and explore a variety of visionary voices who use language to illuminate the depths of the human experience and illustrate how poetry and lyrics speak to emotion, identity, and the world around us. Students are also encouraged to reach beyond the familiar and explore poetry and lyrics that speak to them, from across the world.
A Global Lens
Poetry exists in every culture, from ancient oral traditions to contemporary spoken word. By showing that every community has used poetry to share stories, emotions, and values, we affirm that poetry belongs to everyone, not just to a few “famous” writers from the Western canon.
As students explore traditions such as haiku (Japan), ghazal (Middle East/South Asia), praise poetry (Africa), and spoken word (global), they begin to see poetic expression as both ancient and evolving. Inviting them to bring poems or song lyrics from their own languages or cultures and to translate, perform, or create inspired responses builds pride, belonging, and shared understanding in the classroom.
Why POETS Works
This BOB builds over time, allowing students to grow through repeated, deepening engagement with poetry and/or lyrics. Each phase, POETS 1, 2, and 3, layers cognitive, affective, and performative dimensions of learning. The structure supports differentiation, fosters student agency, and promotes authentic assessment. It also cultivates transferable literacy skills: interpretation, analysis, communication, and self-reflection through an inherently creative and human medium.
POETS 1: Reading as Connection
Students begin POETS by selecting a poem or song lyric that resonates with them. They share the reason for their choice, analyze the poem’s message, purpose, and justify who they think the audience might be. They are also asked to make a connection to their own lives.
They then present their poems aloud, on the day that they select from within the teacher-provided timeline, focusing on clarity and confidence. After each presenter, their poem or lyric gets added to a visual classroom display so we can be immersed in the text (printed/copied by the teacher). This first stage emphasizes that poetry is meant to be heard and shared. Students learn that understanding deepens when we experience language aloud.
Through POETS 1, students are:
Making personal and emotional connections to text
Practicing oral reading and presentation skills
Assessment lens: content comprehension, reflection, and oral fluency
POETS 2: Reading as Interpretation
In the second phase, after explicit instruction or review of figurative language and literary devices, students move from reading to reciting a poem or lyric, going from comprehension to interpretation. They apply feedback from their first presentation and focus on improving their sense of voice, pacing, and nonverbal communication. Additionally, students analyze the poem or lyrics’ structure, rhythm, and use of figurative language, considering how these choices impact tone and meaning. They learn how form supports function, building metacognitive awareness of craft and authorial intent.
Through POETS 2, students are:
Analyzing structure, rhythm, and stylistic devices
Developing interpretive oral performance
Strengthening eye contact, tone, and audience awareness
Applying feedback for growth
Assessment lens: analysis, communication, and expressive delivery
POETS 3: Writing as Self-Expression
In the final stage, students become poets or lyricists themselves. Drawing on what they’ve learned about content, style, and performance, they compose and present original poems. Each student writes with intention, considering message, medium, audience, and impact.
This phase often sparks a sense of vulnerability and pride, the kind that comes from authentic authorship.
As one student reflected:
“When I read my poem aloud, it felt like breathing in color. I didn’t know my words could sound like that.”
Through POETS 3, students are:
Writing creatively with purpose and audience in mind
Applying stylistic devices for impact
Integrating feedback and reflection into performance
Assessment lens: creative writing with intentionality, meaning-making, and expressive growth
The Power of Progression
Like the Master Storyteller tri-BOB, each revisit of POETS adds another dimension. Each phase mirrors the natural journey from appreciation to creation: Read it. Interpret it. Write it.
By the end, students not only meet the expectations for literary analysis and oral communication, they internalize that poetry is both art and advocacy. They discover that their voices matter, that language can be a tool for both personal insight and public expression, and that listening to others’ words expands empathy and understanding.
POETS as a Tri-BOB
POETS invites students to think critically, feel deeply, and share authentically. Through this tri-BOB, students learn to recognize the beauty of language and, more importantly, the beauty of their own capacity to use it because they have had the opportunity and space to grow their learning over time.
All tri-BOBs evolve through each iteration, and so should the students. When they own the teacher’s feedback through their SO (Statement of Ownership), which they do on all of my projects, they become responsible for enhancing their next steps in learning.
When students are given the time and space for deep learning through this project, they come to see that poetry is both a concept and a form. As a concept, poetry opens space for diverse cultural expressions — chants, songs, spoken word, rap, and storytelling, that may not look like “traditional” written poetry but are just as poetic. As a form, poetry allows exploration of craft, technique, and literary artistry across cultures: from haiku to slam, from sonnets to free verse.
For Educators
For teachers, POETS is a reminder that literacy is not only about decoding texts but about encoding meaning. That is why this BOB project can work from Grades 4 up. When students read, interpret, and write from the heart, we witness the transformative potential of voice, and that’s what Building Outside the Blocks is all about.
