Mandala as Metaphor: Getting to Know Students
Making Mandalas Across Content Areas
Watch the full walkthrough and grab the companion slide deck — the same one shown in the video — with everything you need to try this collage-poem strategy in your own room, in any subject.
One way we educators know an assignment will work is when we’ve tried it ourselves. Here’s one version of a collage assignment I used at the beginning of the school year, inviting students to tell me more about themselves. I used it when I taught middle school, but I’m confident it will be equally useful with older students in high school and college.
It also can be used to show learning across the content areas, throughout the course or school year — see “Making Mandalas Across Content Areas” above for a walkthrough of how it plays out beyond the language arts classroom.
A mandala is a symbolic representation of a symbol in a dream, representing the dreamer’s search for completeness and self-unity. Students create a picture poem or create a collage with cutouts.
Create a mandala poem with metaphors that tell us which reflects who you are and/or hope to be:
- A flower
- An animal
- A bird
- A color
- A person I admire
- A place
- A favorite quotation or “saying”
If you’ve assigned a summer reading text, invite students to include a quotation from one of those texts. If you did not assign summer reading, assign a short story the day before you give this assignment. Invite students to quote from a common story, or have students read together an engaging poem from which they are invited to quote a line.
Here’s mine, incorporating the following: rose, panther, robin, green, Mahatma Gandhi, and the classroom saying “Be the change you want to see.”
ANNA’S POEMA robin scampered across the green grass
Chirping and singing with sass
Pausing to peak as though it were hiding in plain view
Just like I used to do.The thorns on the roses protect it
Like I hoped my cool words would do
When I was having a temper fit.
When they wouldn’t include me, too.A fleet, black panther streaked across my vision
As I ran track in college to fill my mission
To become a teacher so I could reach
And learn with the students I’d met on the beachSo in the classroom, I could be the light
Like Mahatma Gandhi says of the peaceful fight
“Be the change you want to see”
That’s what I’m still learning to be.
ABOUT THESE MATERIALS
The Mandala strategy has been used by educators in various settings. This slide deck represents Anna J. Small Roseboro’s adaptation and presentation of the strategy. Educators are welcome to use, share, and adapt these materials for noncommercial educational purposes. Please retain attribution when using slides from this deck.
↓ Download the Mandala slide deck (PDF)