Teacher Overview of Program

1. Students served
The original Basketball Poets™ group were primarily "at risk" 4th and 5th grade students, however the program can be modified to serve any type of student.

My original goal was to reach students who needed:
1) confidence and expressiveness in reading
2) to improve their conduct
3) help to increase reading comprehension
4) help with increasing their creativity, understanding, and expression.

My program is successful in all four areas

2. Goals, Strategies, and Activities
Basketball Poets Program works best is to close the achievement gap of "at risk" students by exposing them to literature, specifically poetry, and giving them a sense of appreciation and excitement for it. By encouraging participation in performance, writing and reading, discussion, and analysis of literature, especially Love That Dog, by Sharon Creech, the students increase their reading comprehension and desire to succeed. The low academic-performing student is motivated to participate in oral performance by their love of basketball, and eventually associate reading/writing with that love of sport. The two seemingly disparate realms (physical fitness and intellectual pursuit) become inextricably joined in the minds of the Basketball Poets.

Using a contract
The contract includes:
1) maintaining proper grade point average
2) keeping behavior problems to an absolute minimum
3) no plagiarism

Activities
Activities include once a week meetings for 45 minutes in the school gym. Time is divided (though not always equally) between physical activity (basketball), lecture on poetry theory, performance of assigned reading, reading the next lesson, and reading the students' own work. The should be in regular communication with each "poet" and with his/her teachers to ensure all conditions of membership are being met.

By the end of the first semester of the school term the Basketball Poets should perform in a school assembly or PTA meeting.


3. What makes this idea creative and unique
The effective and creative aspect here is that rather than force feed literature down the throats of resistent students, the program instills a love of reading and writing through a constructed connection between basketball -- something the students already love -- and writing, something they don't yet know they will love. Continuing contact with current and former Basketball Poets provides indisputable evidence of the effectiveness of this unique approach to learning.

4. Evaluation
As far as evaluation of success of the program there are many questions that might be asked.
1) Are there less behavior problems than there were before a student's participation in the program?
2) Do they do better than expectation at the end of grade test?
3) How do they score on the Accelerated Reader Test, specifically the one designed for Love That Dog?
4) Have the students exhibited a higher interest in poetry, and therefore literature, than they would have otherwise?

The answer to the questions above is a resounding "yes." In fact, the program exceeded my expectations by a considerable margin.