Count Down Poems

My English department loves spoken word poetry.
We have a thriving creative writing and poetry program as well as a writer's tea and coffee house to celebrate student writing.
Before you take this a shameless bragging you should know that my school is not some well off preparatory academy bustling with aspiring writers and visionaries (though I am sure we have a few walking these halls). We are a racially diverse school full of middle to lower class families, many of whom rarely leave the confines of southern New Jersey or a high school diploma.
Our creative writing community was built from the ground up - mostly by our amazing English department. We identified the writers, promoted the electives, ran the after school opportunities, and our lit coach even organized a visit from Sarah Kay and Phil Kaye as part of  Project Voice. 

Bringing spoken word poetry into your classroom can be scary. Many of the poets write about issues that you or your students might feel uncomfortable with. Modeling the poems as mentor text can be risky business because it opens the door for students to share aspects of their lives that you may not be ready to see. Frankly, you might just want to keep that door closed.
As the teacher, you have to make that call, but I can promise you that using spoken word in any form might be just what you and your classroom need.

The Count Down Poem as Mentor Text 

The Context: I do this activity in Creative Writing during a poetry unit but it has also worked in the 12th grade English story telling unit (poetry as a means of telling a story).

The Activity: I always start with lists to get ideas going. On this particular day I had them write a list of people who have impacted their lives in a big way (positively or negatively). I show the students spoken word poems (I have them read the poem before we watch it). Then I ask the students what they notice, lines they loved or that confused them. I annotate the poem on the board during this time, gently guiding them towards the skills I want them to attempt.

                                                                     Full Text here 

The Count Down Poem: I want the students to mimic the count down structure in poetry as well as play around with repetition. We discussed and annotated these aspects of the text already so they have a starting point. From there I have them select a topic on their warm-up list and use the count down structure to write a poem about it. As always, I model and we share our best lines.

Other great count down poems you could use: Michael Lee, "Pass It On" , Rudy Francisco, "Scars/The The New Boyfriend", Guante, "Reach".