“Do Us Good” by Amanda Gorman, a poem inspired by Wicked

You know me — when a new Amanda Gorman poem drops, I get excited! With the premier of the Wicked movie starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, Gorman unveiled her newest masterpiece inspired by the film, “Do Us Good.”

Your students do not need to have seen the movie to be able to appreciate Gorman’s poem. This poem speaks to the human experience, exploring themes of what it means to be bad, or good, the danger of making assumptions, and what happens when we are daring enough to be different.

In this post, I’m going to give you all the things you will need to share this poem in your class in a way that is SURE to engage your students! Print this handout of the poem out double-sided — one side of the handout should have just the poem, and the other side should have the poem with the stanzas numbered. Hold on the handout for now.

Start the lesson with this slide deck and a free-write of all the different things that come to mind when your students think of the word WICKED. After a few minutes, have students come up and write their associations on the board, or have them call them out as you write them on the board.

Next, pass out the handout and direct students to the un-numbered side first. They can follow along with the text as you play the video of Amanda Gorman reading the poem. There’s also this video that features ONLY Gorman if you prefer. You could have your students highlight and annotate the poem for the brilliant techniques Gorman is so talented at — alliteration, rhyme, word play, and juxtaposition. OR…

— if you want to have some real fun —

Have students participate in a Most Important Stanza Battle. Sounds intense, right? Because IT IS.

I got this idea from my co-presenter Brian Hannon at NCTE. And as soon as he presented it, I said to myself I need to do this in my class immediately. Brian Hannon is a high school English teacher and the curriculum director for the LMS Voice Poetry Database, which is the best free poetry resource around.

In order to make this Most Important Stanza Battle, you will need the backside of the handout with the numbered stanzas and these Canva slides. The best part of the Canva slides isn’t the Mortal Kombat inspired visuals, although those are super cool; it’s the sound effects. Brian Hannon paired up the Mortal Kombat game sounds with the Stanza Battle to the Death slides. Genius! At NCTE, I participated in this activity myself as a “student” and I can honestly say it was the most fun I’ve had “learning” a poem in a long time. Thank you so much to Brian for creating this activity, the amazing slides special effects to go with it, and letting me post it on here! I can’t wait to do this activity in class.

The directions for the activity are included in the Slides, but the gist of it is that you count off your students 1-14. Whatever number they are, that is the stanza that they must argue is the MOST IMPORTANT STANZA to the poem compared to all the other stanzas. After some partner discussion and collaboration, two different stanza representatives battle it out to explain why their stanza is the most important. So easy and so fun, especially when you add in the killer sound effects!

If you have a fun lesson or activity to share here on Teach Living Poets, let me know! I’m always looking for guest authors! Email me at msmith@lncharter.org.