Using Blackout Poems to Help Teach Point-of-View

I really feel like this week has been an incredible teaching week! I am so proud of what my students have accomplished this week and it makes me giddy about next week!
One activity that we did this week that I have never tried before in my classes was a blackout poem.  We studied point-of-view and the story The Secret Life of Walter Mitty in my 8th grade class and they kids did so great with it and we all loved Walter Mitty.  So, Friday is always a really difficult day to plan because you don't want to start something new, but you don't want to do nothing.  Right?  So after we had our vocabulary quiz and our reading time, we did a blackout poem.

This is how the instructions went:
1. First, I need you to pick one of the following characters: Mitty or his wife
(These were the two main characters of our story, so I had them pick one in order to use that character's point-of-view.
2.  Now, write that character's name at the top of your paper.  You are now that person.
3.  Now, use your pencil and go through the sheet that you chose from the story and lightly circle the words that you want to create a story that somehow represents the character you chose.  So, for Walter Mitty's character, they might choose to use the words to create a new daydream that he is having.  Or for his wife, they might choose to use the words to create something that she is telling Walter to buy at the store.
4,  After the students carefully circled the words that make up their story and are satisfied, they used a black marker to black out the rest of the words.
My kids LOVED this! They were so quiet doing this you would have thought it was a test! They even asked if we were going to do this every Friday.  Score!  I love when I find something they love and I can sneak in some learning on them.

This is fun and meets the 8th grade standards as well.  We took some notes this week on the different types of point-of-view and analyzed the points-of-view of various texts as well.  This was just the icing on the cake and I can't wait to read all those wonderful poems to see just how creative they can be.  I also had them label at the top of the paper what point-of-view they were writing in.  For example, did they tell Walter Mitty's story in 1st person? Or was it 3rd person omniscient?

These are some examples of a practice one with less rules.  Since we didn't finish, I don't have photos of the ones we made today, but I will be getting those on here soon!