Craft Lesson 5

Resources
Myers, Walter Dean. Street Love. New York: Harper Collins, 2006.
Discussion
Street Love is an amazing work of poetry that focuses on two individual’s discovery of love. Walter Myers’s book is a great example of how to take a classic plot and retell the story in a new way. This lesson allows the students to practice this method of retelling while increasing comprehension of the parts of a story. Text Reformulation engages the students to think about the original text and identify key elements. They also get to practice sequencing, generalizing, and predicting. The goal is to develop and reinforce good reading strategies. To accomplish the assignment, students need to have background knowledge of the elements of a story (plot, characters, theme, etc.).
How to teach it
The students should read Street Love and identify key elements of the story. After they finish the book, the teacher will give them an example of a text reformulation. Since I play guitar, I would write a song that summarizes the book. Next, the teacher will assign groups and have the students pick how they will retell the story. The students can create a narrative, a poem, a short story, or any other written format. The new text will be shared with the class to review the key concepts in the story. The student’s work will be evaluated with a rubric based on the main parts of the original story.

Street Love

I really enjoyed reading this book. At first I was turned off by the poetry and didn't know what was happening. As I started to understand how the book was written, I was able to pick up on the flow of the verses. This is a great retelling of Romeo and Juliet in contemporary times. Students could relate and identify with emotions and feelings described by characters in the story. I think students would enjoy reading the poetry because it is written in a concise and easily understood format. A lot of good lessons could be constructed by comparing Street Love to other books about love (especially Romeo and Juliet).

Myers, Walter Dean. Street Love. New York: Harper Collins, 2006.