Found Poem Assignment and Scoring Rubric
The Assignment
Working in groups of three or four, students will create a poem of at least 50 lines, 400 words, that
attempts to express the feelings, impressions, thoughts and images associated with being Americans
from a Latino heritage. The poem will incorporate lines taken from already published Latin American
prose and poetry, the movie Stand And Deliver, the students’ own variations of these lines, and lines of
the students’ own creation. The goal is to create a poem that is a poem in its own right, with its own
inherent sense and syntax, rather than a jumble of lines patched together with little or no discernable
flow of thought and expression. The finished poem is to be typed in Calibri 16 point font, justified left,
single spaced, broken into stanzas, with the names and period printed on the last page and sources (at
least 5) printed at the bottom of the last page.
The Rubric
Poems will be awarded points based on the following scoring rubric:
Quality
Poor
Fair
Good
Great
Beyond great
50+ lines,
400+ words
1
2
3
4
5
Format
1
2
3
4
5
Syntax
1
2
3
4
5
Poetic
Power
2
4
6
8
10