Kwame Alexander’s The Crossover and Booked have been popular in my junior high classroom the past couple of years, which got me reading more verse novels and searching for others to recommended to students.
This school year, I decided we would uncover just what is a verse novel and how reading a verse novel compares to reading prose and poetry. I did not want to do too much analysis during the reading experience, so students read two or more verse novels during class time and alongside our poetry reading and writing, and when they were done, I asked them to write a little bit about the books for you and a lot about what makes a “good” verse novel as our culminating literary essay (to demonstrate summary, claim, evidence, reasoning, organization, conventions, etc.).
Click on the images to read about each book. Once it enlarges, you can use the arrows like a slide show.
To learn about our verse novel comparison essay project, you can scroll to the bottom where I share a basic comparison essay checklist and a couple examples.
Verse Novel Comparison Essay
To gather a wide variety of verse novels, our school librarian created a book cart with verse novels, and our public library brought over sixty verse novels from their library collection.
Before reading verse novels, students did some research on the following questions:
- What is a verse novel?
- What is prose?
- What is a narrative?
- What is a novel?
- What is a poem?
- What is a narrative poem?
- What is similar and different about a novel and a verse novel, a poem and a verse novel?
Then, we read author Caroline Starr Rose’s article “Best 9 Tips on Plotting a Novel in Verse” (May 2012) and considered the nine tips as we read verse novels.
After reading two verse novels (some students read quite a few more), students selected two or three of the nine tips to organize the point paragraphs in their comparison essays and used evidence from their books – -taking pictures of the interior as text features — to interpret and analyze the text and how it contributed to the verse novel’s writing. Students were encouraged to grapple with each “tip” and decide for themselves which seem most important from their readerly position and experience.
- Subject matter must be right for poetry.
- Protagonists must be right for poetry.
- Poems should be able to stand alone.
- Poems must contribute to the whole.
- Varied poem lengths.
- Varied line lengths.
- Emotion and structure.
- Poetic form.
- The visual and the aural.
As students drafted, we created a checklist for organizing the formal essay, and they used this for peer editing.
Finally, students posted their comparison essays on our class blog to share with one another and notice the different verse novels, points of comparison, and analyses.
You can see a few examples here:
1) The students selected the novels themselves so it would suit their interests and reading level.
2) Synthesize multiple readings to write a comparative essay by using graphic organizers and research.
3) Formal and informal presentations/compositions.
This unit is differentiated in a way that gives the students options to chose from. The culminating project is going from a summary of their chosen novel and turning it into a comparison essay. The standards demonstrated in this unit are collaboration which is letting the students compare and contrast their ideas.
This unit allowed the students the choice of what novels they could read as long as they read at least two verse novels to compare. They could choose topics that they were interested in but they had to complete the same project. The culminating project was a comparison essay. Speaking and writing standards would be demonstrated.
The culminating project was the Verse Novel Comparison Essay. This unit was differentiated by letting the students be creative and choose the books they found compelling. The students were to do the reading, summarize the book, and then they were to describe what a verse novel was. The students must do research on novels and then combined reading and writing to create their comparison essays.
The unit was differentiated through the texts that were being read. Students were able to pick their verse novel that was of interest to them. The culminating project was to write a comparison essay of the verse novels they had been reading. The standards used in this project demonstrate reading and writing instruction as well as individualized thinking.
1. All the students had their own choice of what novel they wanted to read.
2. The students did the reading, then did a summary over, then did a comparison essay.
3. Reading and writing standards
This activity seems to help the students get a clear understanding of what verse novels are. Each student read a separate novel and write a small summary. The summary was explained in a comparison. Each worksheet gave them a clear understanding on how to complete this activity.
This unit is differentiated by giving students a variety of books to read, based on their interests, hobbies, genre preferences, etc. The culminating project seems to be the post on the class blog of their comparison essays. All of the students’ work is in one place and they can read each others’ essays or see their own. One standard included is, “Students will summarize and paraphrase, integrate evidence, and cite sources to create reports, projects, papers, texts, and presentations for multiple purposes.”
This is such a rich project. Your scaffolding had structure – yet room for students to be creative and pursue their own interests. Love it! (And enjoyed reading the essay samples.) Thank-you for sharing.
So happy to hear my article was helpful!
Yes! Such a great resource.