Today, 3rd grade visited the media center for performance poetry centers. These centers were a collaborative project planned by Shelley Olin (media paraprofessional), Glennda Shealey (3rd grade teacher), Laura Glenn (parent), and myself (Andy Plemmons, media specialist). These centers follow the huge kickoff we had last Thursday with Ishues.

During three 45-minute blocks, the third grade classes rotated through 3 out of 4 centers. Students chose the 3 centers they most wanted to experience and teachers grouped them accordingly. At Laura Glenn’s center, students explored how movement can be incorporated into poetry. She had the students interpret various poems in movement as well as try out specific types of moves. At Ms. Olin’s center, students explored the poetry of hip hop. Ms. Olin brought in her laptop and played various tracks for students as well as used the collection of poetry called “Hip Hop Speaks”. With our student teacher, Ms. Frannie, students explored videos of performance poetry and crafted a list of “noticings” from what they saw. Videos included poets such as Jill Scott, Coleman Barks, Ben Harper, and Maya Angelou. With me, students explored poems for multiple voices and read poems from books such as Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices, The Friendly Four, and Big Talk.

The students will now participate in writing workshops in their classrooms to craft their own performance poetry. They will perform these poems in their classrooms on Friday for their families.

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Recently, I discovered an interesting kind of poetry called book spine poetry while reading the  100 Scope Notes blog.  This poetry is a type of found poem where you gather books that have titles that speak to you in some way as a poet.  You arrange the books in a stack and let the titles on the spines become your poem.

Recently, two classes gave this type of poetry a try.  As students photographed their poems, they imported the pictures into Photo Story and recorded themselves reading their poems.  Take a look at what they created.

Listen to Mrs. Freeman’s Class Poems

Listen to Mrs. Selleck’s Class Poems

Students in fourth and fifth grade have been coming to the media center this week to explore writing poetry from photographs.  We studied several mentor poems by poets such as Jane Yolen and J. Patrick Lewis.  These two authors have collections of poems that are written from photographs, so we explored the language that these poets dreamed up simply by studying a photograph.  Next, students carried digital cameras on a nature walk around the school.  I instructed them to use a poet’s eye to look for possible photo opportunities that spoke to them.  Along the way, I pointed out possible photos that I saw.  This model helped students narrow in to things they might photograph.  For example, I saw a spider web that was woven into a small bush.  When I saw it, it reminded me of a big puff of cotton candy.  I shared with students that this would be a great line in a poem and was something I was likely to take a picture of.  Back in the media center, students imported their photographs into their documents.

In lesson 2, we continued exploring mentor poems for possible structures for our own poems.  We looked at similes, personification, I am poems, and list poems.  Students imported their photographs into a Word document and began typing their own poem.  The teachers, my paraprofessional, my student intern, and I all conferenced with students about their poems.  Students who had time also created a Photo Story with their photo and poetry.  Others simply printed their poem for use on our annual Poem in your Pocket Day.

Check out some of their poems and photos below.

A link to Zach’s poem