Poetry and Basketball

Miss P

Mar 2, 2021

4 min read

Wow. There are so many other words that can describe this book but I am left speechless after finishing this story. The book I am talking about is none other than the Crossover by Kwame Alexander. The Crossover was written in 2014 and follows the story of two twin boys who are star players of their schools basketball team. This book follows a year in their life from their basketball games, new relationships and typical family relationships. Throughout the story the main character, Josh, experiences a lot of things that kids can relate to and be more invested in reading the book. His father deals with health problems and it's a scary time for his family and he also deals with jealousy with his twin brother. This book is written in verse or poem form and each “chapter” is broken into a section of a basketball game. Having the book written in verse form makes it easier to read and stay engaged with. Crossover is also a great mentor text for showing how much fun poetry can be.

Affordances of a verse novel:

There is more content in the book but the verse makes it quick and easy to read and understand
For students who are into music this book has a sort of beat to it
None of the poems are written the same, this can serve as a mentor to show students different writing variations
Gets students interested in poetry

Writers vs "struggling" Writers

This book is a great way to get students interested in writing and as well as showing students that anyone can be a writer and it doesn't if you believe yourself to be a writer or not. There is often a stereotype around who are considered writers and who are considered struggling writers. This chart from the article Writing, Redefined by Shawna Coppola really helps to show this stereotype.

Allowing these stereotypes to influence us in the classroom can have harmful effects on the students. Girls may be assumed to be the “writers” but that is not always the case. Looking at the new times best selling authors over the decades men have been the ones to dominate the list. Over the years the gap between genders of the authors has become less of a gap proving that it doesn't matter what your gender is, anybody can be a good writer. Kwame Alexander is a great representation of this because he is a man and they are typically seen as struggling writers. Writing a book like crossover that's written in verse that also keeps readers engaged is not an easy task. In this PBS interview it talks about how Kwame goes around to different schools to talk about writing and how anyone can write if they just trust in themselves.

My experience with Poetry

Growing up in school I was never a fan of writing, especially poetry. In elementary and middle school we would have a poetry contest once a year where we would have to get up in front of our class and recite a poem we memorized. Everyone had to participate and events like this would give me anxiety because I never felt good enough. I never enjoyed poetry after elementary school because they became less about the rhymes and the fun and more about the hidden meanings. Poetry felt forced on me and I never enjoyed having to analyze a poem because it always felt like work. I have come to hate poetry a little less but I am still unsure about how it fits into my life. The book this week was the first time that I truly felt as though I found something that I enjoyed reading that was written in poetry/verse form. When I have my own classroom books like these because it is so important to show how poetry can be fun and interesting!

Writing!

This week I wanted to challenge myself to try to use crossover as a mentor text to try my hand at writing my own poems. I used the format of two different poems and adapted them to my own topics. This strategy of borrowing an author's form of writing to use in your own writing is a great way to get students writing without feeling like they are not good enough to don't know how. All that is needed for this strategy is an idea and a pencil. In my future classroom I would invite my students to think about topics they are passionate about and then with those ideas I will make a master list on the board for the students to choose from for their own writing. Modeling my thought process for my own poems will be a great way to help students understand how to take writing and make it unique to their own.

The first poem I tried to make my own was based off the poem on page 14/15 of The crossover where the main character talks about the five reasons he has locks.