MacLane Poetry 2016 - What You Need to Know

MacLane Poetry Recitation Guidelines for grades 5-8

Poem Selection

• 14 lines minimum
• 40 lines maximum ( approximately 2 minutes maximum)
• approved by English teacher, to judge for literary value
• each student in 5th grade and the Middle School must have a different poem
• no songs
• no retired poems
• Students may not recite his or her selection from previous years
• no poems that were in the prior year’s finals

Classroom component

• Time will be allotted to peruse poetry anthologies
• Assignment given in conjunction with the recitation
• Students will review the skills of recitation
• Classroom time will be blocked out to prepare for poetry
• Each student will recite for his/her teacher prior to the recitation
• Judging criteria shared with students
• Approximately 20 finalists, 4 per grade based on scores

Judging

• For semi-finals, judges come from within the school
• Finalist judges are not from faculty

Dress Code

• Students and teachers should be dressed up for BOTH preliminaries and final events –even if you are not reciting;  this means dressing up for events even when you are not reciting.
• For girls – dresses or skirts within dress code length, dress pants, shoes, but no overly HIGH heels or rain boots!  
• For boys – blazers, ties, dress shirts, nice pants, shoes - no sneakers

TIMELINE for MacLane Poetry Recitation 2016 Monday, 1/11/2016 LAST DAY for choosing a poem. As soon as a student  selects a poem, his or her English teacher must approve it. Then the teacher will enter the poem selection on a shared Google Doc; only the teachers will have editing privileges. Students must hand in a TYPED copy of their poems for approval. Monday, 1/25 Your poem must be memorized by this date. 6th, 7th and 8th graders will be graded on  memorization and presentation in the classroom setting.   Tuesday, 2/2 - 2/5 & 6th Grade Preliminaries Dress-up day for All Middle School (whether reciting or not.) 5th and 6th Grade poetry recitation from 8:30 - 10. Students will pick numbers to determine their order. Wednesday, 2/3  - 7 & 8th Grade Preliminaries Dress-up day for All Middle School whether reciting or not. 7th and 8th Grade poetry recitation from 8:30 - 10. Students will pick numbers to determine their order. Friday, 2/12    Dress-up day for All Middle School Poetry Recitation Finals! 2015 Finalists’ poems (and therefore not permitted in 2016) Maya Angelou “Caged Bird” Maya Angelou “ Alone” W.H. Auden “As I Walked Out One Evening” W.H. Auden “Musee des Beaux Arts” Elizabeth Bishop “The Fish” Richard Blanco “Photo of a Man on Sunset Drive 1914, 2008” Elizabeth Coatsworth “The Rabbit’s Song Outside the Tavern” Billy Collins “Elk River Falls“ Billy Collins “Litany” Billy Collins “The Trouble With Poetry” Bob Hicok “ After Working Sixty Hours” James W. Foley “Drop a Pebble in the Water” Jeffrey Lee “Technology Terror” Abraham Lincoln “The Gettysburg Address” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow “ The Village Blacksmith” Taylor Mali  “Totally Like Whatever You Know?” David McCord “Islands in the Harbor”    Pablo Neruda “Ode to  Black Panther” Mary Oliver “The Sunflowers” Rumi “Zero Circle” Sara Teasdale “Spring Rain” "Henry David Thoreau excerpt from “Walden” Walt Whitman  “I Hear America Singing” Walt Whitman  ”The Spotted Hawk Stopped By” William Butler Yeats “ Sailing to Byzantium”