Voki Poetry Fun

My students have been publishing their poetry using www.voki.com. They have really enjoyed creating an avatar to present their work. Next we will begin listening and responding to each other poems on our classroom blog. Check our our work here: http://rmtwentyone.blogspot.com/
Here's one about the color blue:

Get a Voki now!

Poetry and Buildyourwildself.com

As we were finishing out CSAP in the fourth grade, I was looking for an engaging project for writing time. So, we wrote poetry. We were reading poetry in every Storytown theme and learning about figurative language. Students were challenged to create a free verse poem about where they are from and also a diamante poem about a subject of their choosing. Students were given specific planners for both poems (there's a great interactive website about diamante poems here). They wrote from the planners and wrote a final draft which was glued to construction paper and displayed in the hall. Then they published their poetry on our class blog.




Once they were finished with their poetry, students created a self portrait using buildyourwildself.com. This website is great for so many levels of students and is very interactive. Students build the features of their wild selves, but as they progress they get to pick, not only human features, but also animal features. Students created some pretty interesting pictures! They emailed their creations to me, I cropped them using Jing, and put them with their poetry on the blog.

They did a pretty good job with this. Their free verse poems don't really read as poetry as much as a short autobiography. One student experimented with rhyming. They were challenged with adding figurative language to their peotry which they really struggled with. Buildyourwildself was a hit of course.

SIOP lesson plan

Poetry Wiki

I'm not sure how everyone else is holding up this month, but I am totally CSAPed out and exhausted. My third graders finished testing today...so that is good! Good luck to you all and the testing yet to come.

I've also been having some technology blues lately-I start a project and then don't finish it, or encounter some issues that I didn't expect, and spend too much time on something ridiculous. Does this happen to anyone else?

One thing I am excited about is the poetry wiki I created. So far my students have published their acrostic name poems there. Soon they will comment on them on the wiki. Please visit and leave your comments if you are so inclined! I decided to use wet paint, which Kelly S. recommended to me. I like how it looks visually, but discovered it doesn't allow for Voki widgets. Oh well, I guess I will keep searching for my favorite wiki site. Any suggestions?

Poetry Unit

This post is cross-posted on my blog.

One subject I love to delve into with my students is poetry. I believe that poetry helps them love language and see more possibilities in what language has the power to do.

My students will become poets through a poetry unit that I have designed. Students will create many poems as they learn different styles of poetry with use of on-line resources and the smartboard and then they will bring them together by creating a podcast of their poems, or a Photo Story. Also students will post a poem they write on a classroom poetry blog. This blog will provide the structure for students and others to respond to their poems and offer feedback.

I am wondering if anyone has any suggestions or recommendations in regards to this poetry unit. Have you tried anything with your students to teach poetry using 21st century learning strategies or technologies? What worked? What other ideas would you suggest that I incorporate into this unit of study? I would appreciate any suggestions or feedback!

The lesson plan and a film about poetry I made is posted on my website.