Use this activity to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity.

“From Prose to Poetry”

In this activity, students will create their own found poetry based on prose fiction text.

Thanhha Lai chose to tell the story of Hà and her family in verse instead of prose. Consider how that choice may have impacted the overall effect of the novel. Using part of a story written in prose, your task is to create a piece of poetry that captures the same elements that the prose does.

• Select a piece of prose text (or use text provided by your teacher) and read it all the way through.
• Decide what you’d like to preserve about that text: the plot? the tone? the characterization?
• Circle or highlight key words that will help you reach your goal. Your intent is to turn this story into a poem by extracting the most important words and images.
• Use the key words you selected to rewrite the text in verse. You may need to add other words so that your poem makes sense, but the result should be shorter than the original prose text.