I was Wrong Poem
Today’s post is inspired by “I Was Wrong About LaMelo Ball” by Ross White, a poet, editor, and professor at UNC Chapell Hill. He’s been one of my long-time favorite poets, and when I came across this poem today, I was so inspired that I stopped everything I was doing and built this lesson.
That last line! Total banger.
Before your students read the poem, have them free-write on these warm up questions in their notebooks or on a separate sheet of paper.
Here’s a handout of the poem if you are starting to use more hard copies in class these days like me to circumvent students using AI for everything. Call on volunteers to read the poem out loud, or read it out loud to them.
To provide some context for the poem, you can show this video on LaMelo Ball’s career. There’s some questions to go along with the video also. The questions are both in the Slides and on a separate handout, whichever you prefer to use.
After watching the video, I suggest re-reading the poem one more time. As they read it through a second time, students should underline lines that stand out to them. Have them compare their lines with a partner. Call on some students who seem particularly intrigued by a line to share why they chose it with the class.
To start digging into the poem, students can work through the provided open-ended questions with a partner or small group. Remind them that the questions are open to interpretation and there can be multiple “right” answers. (Hence, no answer key, sorry!) The questions can be found both in the Slides and on this separate handout (which also includes the warm up questions).
Have students share out ideas for the interpretation and/or personal response questions to illicit some discussion and different viewpoints on the poem.
You can stop the lesson there or have them write their own poems using White’s as a mentor text and one of these prompts.
If you’re a fan of rubrics, here’s a rubric:
Link to the SLIDES
Thanks for reading! If you have a cool lesson or activity to share on TeachLivingPoets, email me at msmith@lncharter.org. I’m always looking for guest posts!
